Evangelion 2,50: You Will :Not: Survive
by Absoltheharbinger
Summary: When another pilot arrives at NERV Headquarters, what will happen? Will Gendo's scheming stll come to fruition? Self-Insert, based on Rebuild of Evangelion 2.20. Rated for graphic violence, nudity, non-lemon sex, character death, language, randomness ...
1. The New Pilot

**_Hi guys! Absoltheharbinger here! ... Why do people say that? Only I know my password; who else could it be?_**

**_Okay, I'm rambling. I'll stop now._**

**_This is Evangelion 2.50: You Will (Not) Survive, my shameless self-insert based on Rebuild of Evangelion 2.20: You Can (Not) Advance. I am in no way responsible for any disgust or side-effects that may arise as a result of reading this. I REGRET NOTHING._**

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><p>Asuka tumbled through the sky, acrobatically dodging the volley of missile the Angel was firing at her. Her crimson-armoured mecha, the Synthetic Humanoid Evangelion Unit-02, copied her thoughts more than any kind of manual control, as though it was her own flesh and blood. The smell of LCL filled her nose like a heady musk. This was what she had trained for; kicking some Angel ass.<p>

The Angel, by their standards, was strange; a criss-crossing wickerwork of black bones forming a single axle, supported by two spindly legs and with a heavy, bladed pendulum in the middle. At the top of the pendulum, a pair of beaked faces like the hands of a clock rotated jerkily as it tracked her. It looked more like a rampant, half-finished engineering project than a living creature. Asuka knew better than to underestimated it, though. She hadn't been chosen to join the prestigious NERV base in Tokyo-3 for no reason; she was an expert Eva pilot, even for her young age of 15.

The Eva seemed to crash into thin air several feet above the Angel. _Scheiße!_ she thought. _An AT field!_ The Angel tried to retaliate, fixing her with a baleful stare, as its two faces reached a twelve-o'-clock position. Asuka barely moved the Eva's arm out of the way in time as a spear of pink, incandescent plasma fired from the front face's eyes. Asuka, however, followed this up with a hefty stab with the Eva's equivalent to a dagger; a blade as long as a bus that glowed as her own AT field flowed over it. The point was small, but though it could break through the field easily, it couldn't damage it enough to dissipate the energy shield.

A blistering volley of ballistic fire seared from somewhere over by the hills; Asuka could hear bullets like small aircraft whizz past, bouncing off of the AT field and leaving glowing ripples where they made successful hits.

"What the …?" Asuka growled, trying to tear open the field herself, while at the same time trying not to get her head shot off.

A voice crackled over the internal comms, speaking in rough, imperfect German. "_Keep at it, I've nearly got the shield down. You get the core._"

"Don't tell me what to do!" she roared back in response, suspicious of the comms channel. Only the war room had access to communications with the Evas. But the mystery person was right; at that moment, the shield flickered and died, and Eva-02 crashed down heavily on top of the Angel. She found the Core, the heart of the Angel, at the base of its head, and instinctively drove her knife as deep as it would go into it.

The Core exploded in a shower of LCL, followed by the heads … and then nothing.

"I got the _verdammtes_ Core!" she yelled in rage to no-one in particular. The person, however, clearly heard.

"_Try the pendulum!_" they offered. Asuka looked down at the swinging pendulum, conscious that she only had a minute of internal power left before her Eva shut down.

"Can't you get that?" she screamed at them sarcastically.

"_Evangelion-02, I have a minigun. Do you really think I can hit _that_?_"

Asuka swore again and jumped off the Angel's shoulders, grabbing the pendulum bob and impaling it. The Angel screamed in pain, but was not finished off.

"JUST … FUCKING … DIE!" she screamed , slamming the knife in over and over.

At that moment, the sight of the giant Angel collapsing into a pool of LCL was the most welcome sight in the world, as Asuka's visuals died out and the entry plug ejected. It looked like NERV had caught up with her.

/

Asuka slid down off of the mighty chest of her fallen, powerless Eva as they reached NERV headquarters. There were two boys there; both Japanese. One appeared to be a brash kind of guy with a black tracksuit jacket over his school uniform. The other was a smaller, almost effeminate boy with a faraway look on his face, as though he wasn't actually paying to what was happening.

Asuka wasn't going to stand for that. This was her big entrance; he had _better_ notice her.

She was just about to had a go at him about it when she heard a thundering footfall behind her. She turned to look at the source of the noise; surely it couldn't be _another_ Angel?

It wasn't an Angel, but she could almost believe it was. The shape that was stomping along the tracks leading into the Eva bays was so out of place in the metropolis of Tokyo-3 that it could have been.

It was huge, certainly at least 200 feet, and it was clad in plates of deep green armour, the colour of seaweed. It had long, animalistic legs, but human arms and head. It walked on all fours, so its narrow hips and power-coupling tail were considerably higher off the ground than its shoulders, and its neck was abnormally long to allow it to look forward. It had an array of three targeting lenses on the left hand side of its face, but a single almond-shaped eye on the right, decorated with Egyptian designs. That, added with the armoured cowl on the back of its head, gave the impression of a huge, armoured sphinx. What unsettled her most was the grinning mouth it had, filled with narrow teeth. It looked _brutal_.

It didn't help that painted on its hip joint was the NERV logo; half a fig leaf, along with the NERV name and slogan, 'God's in His Heaven, all's right with the world'.

The creature, whatever it was, suddenly stopped, level with Asuka and the two boys. It settled down on its haunches, like a cat laying down. Mechanisms in its neck whirred and stiffened, locking its head in place. There was a hiss, and a cavity at the middle of its back slid open, forcing out a long, slim cylinder of unpainted metal. A small door like a submarine hatch opened near the base, spilling deep crimson, pungent LCL all over the 'platform'. From the plug crawled a young man, clambering down the slippery metal flank of his Eva awkwardly. The plug slid back in, and the conveyor carried the Eva, along with the titanic Gatling cannon on the flat-bed lorry behind it, into the docking bays.

"Another Eva?" asked the vacant-looking boy, confused. "I thought we were only getting one new pilot?"

"Who knows?" asked the other, who was checking out Asuka, who was still wearing her incredibly form-fitting plug suit. Asuka punched him on the nose.

"_I'm_ your new pilot!" she snarled, trying to see where the _other_ new pilot had gone. They were overseeing the storage of their Eva, squatting on their haunches like a cat. _Lazy_, she thought, adding to her newest list. Asuka liked to form lists of things about her fellow pilots that she disapproved of; they tended to quickly become very long.

The other pilot was older than her or the boys, but not by much; about sixteen at most. He was unshaven, and had a scruffy growth of hair all along his jaw. His hair was also quite long for a boy; just past his shoulders. He had serious eyes, and a stern expression as though concentrating. But that wasn't the weirdest thing about the newcomer.

He, like his Eva, was walking on all fours.

"Please don't stare," he said in very sub-par Japanese. He had a flat, deep voice, and sounded British or American. "It makes me uncomfortable."


	2. Henry

"Shinji, Rei; I want you to meet our new pilots."

They were in a separate classroom; Misato had decided it best not to let the rest of the homeroom know that there were now four Eva pilots in their class.

Asuka scowled. The two students in the room were the effeminate, spacey boy from earlier, and a girl. Shinji had short, slightly messy brown hair and blue eyes, with the same weak smile from earlier. Rei, however, had ice-white bob-cut hair, rich red eyes and absolutely no facial expression. Shinji smiled at them and said hello. Rei also greeted them, but there was little conviction, as though she was only doing it because it was what you had to do at times like that. But most of all, Asuka scowled at the other new pilot. He was still sitting like a cat, despite the others all standing.

"I'm Asuka Shikinami Langley," she said haughtily. She had changed into her new school uniform, the light blue dress accentuating her sapphire eyes and curtain of blazing red hair. She was determined to seem cooler than the new guy. "I've been sent by NERV-Germany to bolster your defences. I am a top-grade pilot, and you will respect me as such."

"Hi," said the guy. "I'm Henry Parkinson. I'm an ambassador for Bethany Base," he said simply. "I'm a support pilot," he added, as an afterthought.

"Shinji pilots Eva-01, Rei Eva-00," explained Misato. "Asuka, could you hang around with Shinji for a while to adjust? Henry, you stick with Rei."

Henry nodded, and padded over to Rei. Asuka nodded stiffly, but did not join Shinji. She hated depending on people. Her college degree, despite only being 13, was testimony to that.

Henry soon learned that Rei was not a talker. That suited him fine; neither was he. He just sat at his desk and tried to get used to reading kanji full-time. It was a nightmare, and by lunch break he had a headache.

"Why do you walk around on all fours like a dog?" asked Shinji, who joined them, opening his own packed lunch. He had a quiet voice, and sounded a little hesitant, but it was more than anybody other than Misato had said to him all day.

But this was the one topic Henry didn't like talking about. Sadly, it was hard to escape it; he had to walk everywhere like that. He'd even had reconstructive surgery on his arms to make them longs enough for such movement to even be viable, so his arms were several inches too long for his body; it was cheaper the a spinal op, anyway. But it stood out, especially when he tried to write.

"I don't want to talk about it …" he said.

"Come on," said Shinji quietly. "We're pilots. You can trust me and Rei."

Rei looked around at the mention of her name, but didn't otherwise seem to pay attention.

Henry spoke even quieter that Shinji. "It was during Second Impact. I took a spinal injury. My legs don't work properly on their own."

Behind them, Henry distinctly heard the redhead from earlier cough the word 'weak'.

"Why don't you use a wheelchair?" asked Rei, as though that was the obvious answer.

"I'm not _disabled_, I'm just not as strong," he snapped, as though this was something he heard a lot. "I'm never going to be able to stand if I don't exercise, anyway."

Asuka sniffed disapprovingly. "If I were you, I'd not bothered begging for sympathy. I'd deal with it. Get some medical help. Get them to fix you back or something."

"I'm sorry, _Prinzessin_ Langley," Henry responded, starting to get angry. "But I don't want to be a whiny, needy brat. I would rather I actually did something for myself. This topic is closed. Have a nice day."

"I don't think that it's a bad thing. You've found a way to cope," said Shinji, clearly trying to calm Henry down. Henry merely stonewalled him in response, true to his word.

Rei, unnoticed by any of them, was doing something she very rarely did; she was looking at the newcomer with interest.

"Who was the purple-haired woman?" Henry asked. "The one with the red jacket?"

"Oh, that was Katsuragi Misato. She's in Tactical Command. I guess you could say she's the one who deals with the pilots."

"She's young," Henry said simply, yet slightly admirably.

""Yeah," Shinji agreed, only just thinking about how young Misato really was. He was staying at her apartment, that was true, but he had always seen her as a bit distant. He'd never really thought about how old she really was. "I guess we're all a bit young at NERV."

Henry nodded sagely. "What's Evangelion-01's role?"

"Erm … I'm not sure. I'm usually the one they call on to deal with the Angels."

"Have you ever killed any of those Angels?"

"The Fourth, Fifth and Sixth. Though Rei helped with the last." Shinji could still feel the heat of the last Angel's plasma beam, burning him alive even through the AT field of his own Eva. If Misato hadn't blown the bolts under his section of city …

"I haven't," said Henry plainly. Shinji was expecting him to be jealous, or something. His friends Kensuke and Toji were when they learned that he'd even _been_ in an Eva.

"You … haven't?"

"No. And I don't want to, either. I can hurt them, wound them, help you guys take 'em down. But I couldn't kill one myself."

"Why not?" asked Rei, taking them both by surprise. Rei had a natural ability to make people forget she was there if there was someone else to talk to.

Henry sighed. He didn't fancy his hastily-prepared sandwiches anymore. "I told you I came from Bethany Base. They had a captured Angel there. The Third Angel. When I became a full-time pilot, I was taken to see the creature that gave us the technology to build the very Eva I drove."

"And?" asked Shinji in a whisper, cursing his curiosity.

"I looked into its eyes … and saw myself. I don't know why, but I began to understand the Angel. I almost _pitied_ it."

"How can you _pity_ an _Angel_?" asked Shinji incredulously. Granted, every time _he_ had encountered an Angel, it had been an incredibly painful experience for him.

"That thing … Tunniel … it had been torn apart by humans. It was bones and a Core and not a lot else by the time it was finished with. I think it's a small mercy that Evangelion-05 killed it. But the pain … I can't even imagine. I don't know how or why, but there was _something_ in Tunniel I could relate to."

"Tunniel?" asked Shinji.

"A pet name I gave it. I dunno … it didn't seem right, not giving it a name. I mean, I drew links with your Angels to the angels of God. The Fourth Angel, Sachiel, was the angel of water, and 'the covering of God'. It was first seen out at sea, and wore a mask, right?"

Shinji nodded.

Henry held up a second finger. "The Fifth Angel was your first Angel beaten with actual training, correct? I dubbed it Shamshel, after the angel of daybreak.

"The Sixth Angel, so I hear, gave you some real trouble. Giant freaking plasma beams, if I recall. Ramiel, the angel of thunder." Henry leaned back. "There are two that don't fit the pattern, though. One was our captive at Bethany Base, the other this latest one. I can't draw any actual parallels to the angels of Our Father in Heaven, so I've dubbed them Tunniel and Clockiel for the time being."

"Are you Christian?" asked Shinji, a hint of suspicion in his voice.

"Me? Ha! No. I've just done some research on angels. It's like … therapy, thinking up silly little pet names for these monsters trying to end life on earth. Distracts me from what it actually is to fight and kill them, to pilot the Evangelions, to know that the fate of mankind rests on your every decision, when all you want to do is run and hide like everyone else."

"If you have such a bleak outlook on the Evas, why d'you pilot one?"

Henry paused. "I guess, it's 'cos Evangelion-N is like another part of my body and soul. When I'm in that cockpit, I can be big, and powerful, and fearless. I feel _free_." He gave a low, slightly rueful chuckle. "How ironic is it; Evangelion is Greek for 'messenger of good tidings'. Not for the Angels, huh?"


	3. Talking Tactics

"This is Katsuragi Misato. Tactical meeting is now open."

"Misato, do we need the formalities?" asked the serious blond woman in the lab coat.

Misato shrugged. She was wearing a short red coat of office, left open at the front to reveal a black tanktop and her expansive chest. Her colleague, introduced as the Technical Commander Akagi Ritsuko, was dressed more conservatively. The only other people in the meeting room were an old man who sat in the corner, enigmatic and silent yet omnipresent and unsettling, and the four pilots. Henry only just realised how young they all were; he was easily the oldest pilot, and he was only just sixteen. And Misato looked barely thirty. He couldn't work out how old Akagi was, but she seemed to be about the same age as Misato.

"Whatever. This session's purpose to make each other aware of our Evas, battlefield roles and clarify certain issues."

"We know what our purposes are," said Shinji, indicating himself and Rei. Rei just flicked her red eyes at whoever was speaking. She never seemed to need to blink.

"But _they_ don't," said Misato tiredly. She was going to need a beer after this.

"Oh. Yeah. Right. Sorry."

"I know what my role is," chipped in Asuka. "To kick ass. That's why I was transferred here, wasn't it?"

Misato sighed and facepalmed. This was going to be a long meeting. She could tell that Asuka was going to be a minor problem.

"As I'm the only one here who seems to be taking this entirely seriously," said Henry, "I guess I should make myself clear. Evangelion Unit-N is, first and foremost, a _support_ unit. Due to psychological reasons I do not need to go into, I cannot kill an Angel directly. My job is to help you guys out with an extra set of guns and stop you getting killed."

"Why can't you kill 'em?" asked Asuka with a sneer. "It's easy. You just get to the Core and …"

"I've already explained to Shinji, but I guess you weren't listening. I get mental block if I try. The only part of a training exercise I couldn't pass."

"They're not _people_, you know. You've just got no guts. How'd you make it to pilot, anyway?"

Henry growled ferally. "I have something you don't, _Prinzessin_. It's called self-control. Don't test it."

"It's called cowardice."

Asuka had finally gone too far. Henry leapt onto the desk, bounding over and grasping Asuka's throat in his hands and squeezing. The pair went tumbling to the floor, but Henry wasn't going to let go. At least, until Misato and Shinji managed to drag him, seething and hissing, away from her. Asuka's hair seemed to crackle with electricity as her own rage caught up with her.

"WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU THINK YOU'RE PLAYING AT?"

"There is no need to shout," said Ritsuko in a governess' tone; the tone that said you had better stop, or _else_.

"That animal just attacked me!" she responded, glaring at the struggling Henry. "He should be put down like the dog he clearly thinks he is!"

"Too far, man!" yelled Shinji. The only reason Henry wasn't still trying to kill Asuka was because he couldn't use his legs. Henry's flailing soon ceased, but Misato kept him in a half-Nelson, panting at the effort.

"You'd better not try your luck again, _Prinzessin_; Katsuragi won't always be here to save you."

"That's enough now!" yelled Misato, twisting his arm slightly. The pain was enough, and Henry stopped fighting her completely. She didn't look it, and neither did he, but she was much stronger than him. He didn't want to admit it, though; he had to grasp at all the strength he had.

"So anyway," said Henry, voice shaking as his composure tried to return, "Evangelion-N is more of a long-range unit. Following the Ramiel incident, Bethany Base felt that a gun-platform Evangelion would benefit Japan's efforts."

"Ramiel?" asked Ritsuko, arching an eyebrow as though she could see the answer already.

"A pet name he has for the Sixth Angel," Rei said quietly. "It's just what he does." There was something else Rei wanted to say, but she didn't know how to, so she didn't bother. But the thought was something along the lines of _I like it._

Henry finally wrenched himself free from Misato, but contrary to her expectations, he just sat back in his own seat on the other side of the table. Asuka's fists visibly clenched. "Evangelion-N was shipped over with a variety of experimental heavy weapons."

"How do you carry them?" asked Shinji. It was hard enough holding and using standard Eva guns, but he had seen the weapons convoy. Each those guns was nearly as long as the Eva was.

"Back-mounted," continued Henry. "They connect on either side of my plug. The Evangelion's eyes are its targeting array, its heart the power source."

"Hang on a minute," interrupted Rei. "If the weapons mount above your plug, then …"

"… I can't get out until the gun comes off," Henry finished. "My Evangelion is also a mobile command centre. I have Evangelion-to-Evangelion communication frequencies; I'll help co-ordinate group attacks, relay information and so on. I can also give you a shout if I need a hand."

"I'm not sure I want this guy on my side in a battle against Angels. I think he would be better off in a padded cell somewhere far from civilisation."

"Shikinami Langley Asuka, that is enough!" barked Misato, her headache growing worse. The last thing she wanted or needed was Asuka starting World War Three in the Geofront itself. "Henry's right. If we can't reach you, he's got a much better array than you lot; he can relay what we tell you. So if we're down for whatever reason, he takes immediate control until we contact you. This is final," she added to Asuka, who was about to complain about it.

"But there's a problem," said Henry. "Not only can I not get out with a gun on my back, but I can't run around with it either. It's all well and good for you, but with those guns, the ammo for them and the safety bracers, I'm essentially lugging around three Evangelions in weight. Plus, those weapons aren't cheap in the energy department either; I need to stay plugged in if I want more than two or three rounds. Without a weapon, I'm possibly more mobile than any of you, but I'm almost defenceless."

Asuka added 'dependent' to her steadily growing list.

"What about the Vatican Treaty?" asked Shinji. "Aren't we only allowed three functioning Evas per NERV headquarters or something?"

Fuyutsuki stood up. "I have already cleared for Parkinson. As he is a support unit, his Eva has been bundled with Unit-00 to constitute to a single Eva."

"If not," said Henry, "then it wouldn't matter anyhow; I'm still under the command of Bethany Base, I've just been deployed here. I have papers to prove my testimony, too."

"I'm not convinced," said Asuka. "What's to say he's not here for a hostile takeover?"

"Shut up, Asuka," said Shinji, who was starting to get fed up with Asuka's scepticism.

"We've taken that precaution into account," said Ritsuko. "Henry allowed us to implant an N2 mine in his Eva's chest cavity, right next to the entry plug. If he was to try to turn on us, we are given leave to detonate the mine and blow up Unit-N."

"Are you crazy?" cried Misato, to whom this was news. "At that sort of range, the whole Geofront could go up!"

"The blast will be contained by the Evangelion's armour," said Henry calmly, as though having an active Weapon of Mass Destruction next to you that could be fired at any moment was nothing to particularly worry about. "But everything inside will be completely obliterated. I'm not likely to turn on you if _that_ is the punishment."

Shinji wasn't so sure, but he chose not to voice his opinions.


	4. Moving In

Henry, it seemed, would be staying at NERV headquarters for accommodation, apparently because 'it would be best if Commander Ikari could keep an eye on me'. Misato would have argued, but she barely had enough room left after herself and Shinji to accommodate one more, and Asuka's stuff had already been shipped to her address. Misato didn't want to admit it out loud, but she was the one who threw them into the dangerous missions they had to run; she felt responsible for their safety.

Henry's quarters were spartan; a fold-out futon, small kitchen, and en-suite bathroom, an old bookcase that bore a lot of dust, but not a lot else. Henry didn't care; NERV Germany had had to organise shelter for the millions of people stranded, homeless on the high ground after Second Impact, so for the first few years of his life Henry had lived in cramped refugee camps, or abandoned hostels after he ran away from home. His possessions were few and far between; mostly several copies of Abrahamic religious texts, the pages stuffed with jutting sheets of notepaper scrawled in notes, a pile of sketches of the confirmed angels, schematics for Evangelion-N, an empty photo frame. The battered leather collar of a cat he'd befriended. His clothes were not very numerous, either; a handful of shirts and a heavy ex-military jacket (stained liberally with LCL) and some changes of school uniform. His possessions could all fit in a sports bag, so it looked more like a holiday than a pseudo-permanent work relocation.

"Hey."

Henry jumped around, growling savagely, before he realised who it was. "Oh. Sorry."

"No worries, Henry." Shinji looked around at the bare room. "Misato asked if I could help you unpack. You don't seem to have got started."

Henry hated the presumptuousness of the boy. "I'm finished, actually."

Shinji did a double-take. "This is all you have?" He scanned the piles of books and notes. "Quite a fanatic on the Angels, I see."

"I think it better to understand the enemy," growled Henry warningly.

Shinji then leafed through the sketches, before Henry swiped them from his fingers.

"They're good," complimented Shinji, trying to make up for whatever it was he'd done to upset Henry. "You draw them really well."

"Says the boy who killed them," said Henry coldly. "Stop going through my stuff like that, please. I don't like it."

Shinji backed off, apologising. Then he noticed the collar, so out of place among the Angel paraphernalia. "Am I allowed to ask what that is?"

"It's a cat collar," said Henry facetiously.

"I didn't think we were allowed pets here."

"There is no more cat," said Henry, starting to sound like Rei.

"What happened?"

"I killed it."

Shinji looked shocked. "What?"

"It kept drawing people to my hiding places. I broke its neck."

Shinji decided it best to pretend that Henry wasn't talking about murdering in such a dismissive way.

"You must think I'm crazy. A dead cat, an Angel fixation. You do, don't you?" Henry muttered.

"N-no!"

"You do, Ikari. But it gave me no pleasure to kill that cat. It was my only friend. And the Angels interest me. I could say _you_ were crazy for always listening to the same tape on your S-DAT."

"How did you notice that?"

Henry decided to shut up again. The truth was, that he'd seen Shinji's S-DAT, and had the hunch that he only had the one tape. "I'm sorry if I came across as a little crabby today, but I've just migrated across half the planet and I'm tired and stressed and knowing my luck we'll have an Angel attack before I've even adjusted. I've got orders from two different sources and I'm stretched to breaking point." He sighed. "Can we just put all this behind us?" He offered Shinji a hand.

Shinji shook it. "Did you want to come to our place for dinner? We've got plenty of food."

"I was going to eat at the cafeteria. Asuka will be there, won't she?"

"Don't worry about her. She just seems to be jealous that you stole her limelight. Misato'll keep her in check."

Henry wanted to say something, but he needed to at least pretend to like Shinji, at the very least. "Fine. I'll join you."

"Come on, then," said Shinji, heading to the door.

"By the way, Ikari," said Henry, padding out and locking the door, looking very bizarre in doing so. "Please don't mention any of my eccentricities to Miss Katsuragi. I'm not sure how you took it, but I don't think she'll be too pleased to have what looks like a crazed lunatic running around HQ. Especially one that doesn't have any obligation to obey her orders."

"What do you mean?"

"I'm still under direct control of Bethany Base. All orders from NERV-01 are secondary directives only unless approved by them. It's a bitch, I know. I would rather I never got messed up with all this, but it's too late to back out now."


	5. Dinner With Misato

"So, Henry: when did you decide to be a pilot?"

Misato was trying to be friendly. He knew that. She only wanted to find out more about him. But it felt like an interrogation to him, and it was all he could do to tell himself to keep smiling and stay civil.

"I was about seven or eight when I first thought about working for NERV. It felt like repaying the favour, in a way. They gave us all homes after the Impact." Henry decided to leave out that he ran away from home about that time and started living rough. He couldn't take the strain anymore; Dad died in the impact and his mother was clutching at straws to raise two children on her own. "When I was twelve, they started advertising for children my age to start piloting the Evangelions. I still don't what persuaded me to sign up. It could have been a snap decision. It could have been destiny. But all I know is that here I am; Evangelion pilot in a strange land."

Asuka huffed into her miso soup. She didn't believe a word of his story it was too clean cut to be true. "I chose to be a pilot after college. Got my degree, made sense to get a job. Quickly aced the training, and I got here to get some real work."

"Do you have any family?" asked Shinji.

Henry shook his head. "I used to have a huge family, apparently. We all stayed kinda close. Mom and Dad, a whole heap of brothers and sisters and cousins … and then there was the Impact. Dad and the brothers and sisters and cousins were all gone. Disappeared. Only Mum, me and my older brother made it out. They could be alive and I wouldn't even know. I've already given up letting it get me down."

"I feel your pain," said Shinji. "We've all lost loved ones in the Impact and the following years."

"So where did you live, anyway? You sound English," asked Asuka.

"I was born in England, but as most of that's underwater now I guess I'm Russian. I've been living at Bethany Base for the last four years, at any rate."

"I must say, Henry; you've got a lot of guts coming here when you can't kill an Angel," Misato remarked. "We've had as many Angel attacks in the last few months as the rest of NERV's operational life."

Henry nodded. "Sachiel, Shamshel and Ramiel. And that other one, but I don't know what to call it. But what I want to know is why they are so interested in Tokyo-3. The only other Angel I've seen is Tunniel, and that was in deep-freeze under Bethany Base until I was redeployed. I was being airlifted out after the Angel escaped."

"Well," said Misato, trailing off. Henry was a pilot, after all. A NERV pilot. He was as much responsible for the future as Shinji or Asuka were. But she had a funny feeling about Henry, like she didn't _want_ to look at him twice. He was slightly suspicious in how much he knew about the Angels, too.

What could be the harm in showing him?

"Under the Geofront. That's where they're trying to get to. I'll show you and Asuka why tomorrow. You probably won't believe me if I just _tell_ you."

"Well, at least that's one thing on my agenda," said Henry nonchalantly. He was acting as though he already knew, but was running along with their plans like some great game of chess.

"This is gonna be a waste of time," muttered Asuka.

/

Morning. It was a long elevator trip. Misato told him and Asuka that they had to go two kilometres underground to get to the place she referred to as Terminal Dogma. Then they had to get through five security bulkheads.

"Pretty secure," remarked Henry amusedly as the last bulkhead whirred and screeched as the dozens of bolts disengaged.

"Only certain members of staff have the right to come down here. Me, Dr Akagi, Commander Ikari, and a couple of others. It's impossible to hack in, and with the MAGI regulating access, if any unauthorised persons come down this far the whole chamber is rigged to blow. And I don't just mean trespassers; Angels, too."

"I wonder why? Why go to all that bother to keep something out?" Asuka pondered.

"I think it's to stop stuff getting _out_ as well," said Henry.

"Like what?"

The bulkhead ground open and Asuka gasped in shock. Henry merely smirked, as though his opponent had done exactly the move he had suspected.

Terminal Dogma was almost empty; a great cube of a room with dark, armoured walls. Below them, a great pool of LCL stood still as iron, the pungent aroma like a heady drug. Asuka looked glazed over, as though trying to gauge how deep it was and whether it was safe to dive in. But what made her gasp was not the sheer scale of the thing. It was the one thing that was inside.

A giant, humanoid form, taller than an Evangelion, whiter than snow and covered in blubbery folds of flesh, was nailed to an enormous crucifix in the centre of the lake. It almost seemed to glow in the gloom. There was a giant spear impaled through its broad chest, a small cascade of LCL flowing from the exit wound. Its head had no discernable features, but was wearing a pitted burgundy mask with seven eyes; three on the left, four on the right. It was hard to tell, but its stare seemed to be fixed on the three of them. It had no legs; just a dense mass of white sticks at the base of its torso. At least, they _looked _like sticks, but it was soon clear that they were a thicket of human legs. Asuka looked slightly ill. Henry grinned.

"An Angel?"

"It's dead … right?" asked Asuka. She didn't sound right; some of the brash cockiness was gone from her voice.

"Dead?" Henry laughed. "You think that could kill an Angel? It's just dormant."

"That's right," said Misato. "That's why it is imperative that the Angels don't get here. If the Second Angel awakes, it would cause Third Impact. The End of the World."

"Lilith," murmured Henry, enthralled, as though this the dream of a lifetime. "The Grand Progenitor, Angel of Fertility, Seed of Wisdom … and we are standing before her. You should feel honoured."

"The Seed of Wisdom?" asked Misato, confused.

"Yes. Some sects of Abrahamic religions refer to Lilith as such. In the same way, Adam is the Seed of Life. It all makes _sense_."

"What makes sense, Angel-nerd?" asked Asuka.

"The Angels we have fought must be Adam's progeny; very big, and strong, and tough, but still quite rudimentary. I wonder what Lilith's children would have been like?"

"You're showing an unhealthy interest in this thing. I say we just kill the thing," said Asuka.

"I'm not sure that's possible," said Henry. "All of our Evangelions are, to my knowledge, constructed from science picked up from studying Tunniel and Adam. I'm not they'd be able to get close to Lilith without causing Third Impact. Even if they could, that spear is an Angel-killing weapon. It's designed to cut through anything, including AT fields. If that only knocked Lilith out, then what do you really think _you_ can do?"

"I agree with Asuka, actually," added Misato. "You seem to know an awful lot about these things."

"Let's go," said Henry, turning away from Lilith. "We've seen what we needed to."

"You're avoiding the question, Henry," said Misato, running up to him and stopping him.

"You haven't asked me anything yet."

"You know too much. How?"

"Katsuragi, you forget that I've spent the last four years living at Bethany Base, the top base for studying Angels and developing Evangelion science. _You pick up things_."

The klaxon began to wail.

"What's that?" asked Henry.

Misato frowned. "Angel attack. Come on!"

They ran for the elevator, and Misato hammered the emergency lock button before they set off, sealing off Terminal Dogma once again.

"Henry, Asuka; get to the Eva bays. Dr Akagi will meet you there."


	6. Sahaquiel

"What have we got?" asked Misato when she got to the bridge.

"We have an extraterrestrial body confirmed that has just entered the upper atmosphere."

"Could be an asteroid."

"Asteroids don't have AT fields strong enough to bend light. We can't get a clear reading on it, 'cos it keeps messing up our radar. Whatever it is, it's _huge_."

"So we can't work out where it's going to land?"

"No, but it's pretty much on top of us. It's as though it is trying to punch through our defences by sheer impact velocity."

"I'll tell the pilots," said Misato.

/

"The Angel is in free-fall towards the Geofront," said Henry, now changed into his black and green, form-fitting plugsuit. "We don't know where it will land or when it will get here, because it's screwing with all light-based analysis."

"Typical," muttered Asuka in her own Evangelion. "So … what?"

"We're being deployed at strategic points around the city. Each Evangelion will try and reach Sahaquiel at the same time, and catch it with its AT field."

"Sahaquiel?" asked Shinji.

"Angel of the sky. Are we all clear on the mission? Only we're running out of time."

All of the three pilots chorused 'yes', surprised at how well Henry was taking to leadership.

/

"Guys, I'll give you positional data as best as the bridge can supply. Are you ready?"

"Yes."

"Yeah."

"Just get me to the _verdammtes_ Angel already."

"And … release!" yelled Misato over the mic.

At once, in three different locations around Tokyo-3, the Evangelions' power cables burst from their sockets. All three broke into a run, the Evangelions' sturdy but slimline bodies quickly accelerating across the mountainous landscape.

"OK: Shinji, you need to travel at 300° from north; Asuka, 079°; Rei, 186°."

It was difficult work. The possible trajectory of the black ball was being calculated as effectively as possible by eye from the Geofront, but Henry still had to bark out fresh directions every couple of seconds as one of them ran off course or Sahaquiel changed direction.

"Henry, it's shedding!" yelled Misato hysterically.

"What?"

"Its outer layer has peeled off, Henry. It's smaller and faster now!"

"Got it," said Henry. He had to help the others close the net. "Misato, put me on internal power!"

"What? You've got no weapons!"

"Do it!"

"Releasing!" Henry heard the power plug crash to the ground, and the display flashed up the warning that he had fifteen minutes of power. He crouched, and like a coiled spring he leapt forward, thundering across the landscape, soon breaking the sound barrier.

"Shinji, you're closest to it; stop that Angel!"

"How?"

"Use your AT field as a shield; let it land on you!"

"That won't stop that thing!"

"It will stop it descending! Asuka, get in there and get the Core!"

"Did you need to tell me?" snapped Asuka.

"Just get a move on!"

Henry checked the HUD. Unlike other Evangelion entry plugs, Evangelion-N's was mounted upside-down, so that it was in the same stance as the mecha. Unfortunately, this made it awkward to look up. Henry noticed that what was a white crystalline lump was slowly unfolding like a giant flower. Black and psychedelic coloured rings radiated from a single eye-like shape in the middle. It was _huge_; easily the size of Tokyo-3. He drew up alongside a tall orange-yellow Evangelion with a single green eye.

"Rei!" yelled Henry. "Jump on!"

"What?" asked Rei.

"I'm faster than you; I can get you there in time to help the others!"

Rei must have got the point; Evangelion-00 bounded onto Evangelion-N's back, and Henry felt a heavy weight pressing down on the base of his ribcage. Warnings began to flash on his HUD about the weight load he was carrying.

"I know!" Henry roared at it. "Shut up and run!"

/

Shinji got there first; he skidded to a halt and braced himself. The Angel Sahaquiel was tumbling from the sky on top of him like a great predatory bird. Shinji fired up his AT field, ready. A mighty downdraught blasted the surrounding area flat as the field forced down the trees.

CRASH. A sound like a gong and the crunch as the Evangelion's armour strain under the impact. Shinji was holding the Angel up, but he wouldn't be able to hold it long.

Sahaquiel had other ideas; a spindly dark figure like a blackened skeleton wearing a birdlike white mask unfolded from the great eye' pupil, grasping Shinji's hands in what looked like an affectionate gesture until it drove ten-foot drill through his palms like nails and started to burn through the armour.

Shinji howled in pain; his high synch rate meant that he felt all the pain his Eva did. And this hurt. _A lot_. But he couldn't let go; not until Asuka, Rei or Henry got the Core.

"Guys, I could use some help here!" he gasped through the pain. His hands were starting to bubble in the LCL like they always did when the Eva started taking heavy damage.

"Stop telling me what to do, stupid!" spat Asuka, tearing through the two AT fields in a jumping stab with her progressive knives in hand. The bulbous crimson Core then did something neither of them had expected.

It jumped out of the way. The Core started racing around the inside of the pupil, evading Asuka's stabs.

00.30.00.

"Asuka, I could really do with you killing this thing!" Shinji yelled, the armour on his forearms starting to crack off, revealing (for some reason) raw, red flesh.

"I'm _trying_!"

"We haven't got the time to argue like this! Where are the others?"

/

Over the hill, a mossy green-and-yellow shape came speeding into the valley like a rampant meteor. It looked for all the world like some warrior who had tamed and was riding a lion into battle. Evangelion-00 leapt from Unit-N's back and grasped the Core in its hands like an adult interrupting a ball game. The green sphinx, on the other hand, leapt between them and snapped at the mask, which had been trying to shoot Asuka full in the face with a plasma beam. There was something powerful, almost _bestial_, about the Unit-N, tearing off Sahaquiel's 'head' as though it was nothing.

"Asuka, stab the damned S2 and do it quick!" snapped Henry, conscious that the others were taking damage_ and_ running out of time.

"I know!" she screeched, driving both prog-knives in with a contemptuous twist. The Core bled, but did not rupture. "Just … die!"

Sahaquiel finally gave up; the Core exploded messily, splattering them all liberally with congealing LCL. The acid-trip patterns began to darken and fade, and the Angel's colossal body collapsed, running down the hills into a torrent that engulfed the city like a red wave. But right then, the rainbow forming from the falling blood was a relief to the rapidly weakening Evangelion pilots, tired as they left the crest of the adrenaline high.

Only one of them felt particularly sad. Henry hung his head dejectedly, as the Eight Angel slowly washed away.


	7. Aftermath

"Commander Ikari, I wish to take full responsibility for the damage sustained by the Evangelion Units during the battle against the Angel."

Misato stared at him. They were back at the command bridge in the Geofront, on the comms to the Commander. She was confused; that was exactly what she was going to say. Commander Ikari hadn't known about the deployment of all four Evas, as Sahaquiel had knocked out most communications.

"I wish to elaborate," Henry explained. "I feel responsible, as I was in charge of co-ordinating the assault and I should have contributed more to the actual attack. Evangelion Units 00 and 01 both sustained heavy damage and it was my fault."

"I refuse to stand aside and take no blame for this," cut in Misato. "I was the one who allocated command to Parkinson. If anyone is to blame it is myself, especially as Parkinson has no jurisdiction over the other Units."

"Enough of your grovelling," said the faceless voice of Commander Ikari. "I blame neither of you for taking initiative in the Angel attack. Also, the cost of not doing so would have far-outstripped the cost of the damage done."

"Oh," said Henry, who had really been expecting more, or at least some form of punishment. Being let off the hook so easily felt wrong.

/

Henry was back in his room, lining up candles on his shelf and carefully lighting them. All different shapes and sizes. Black, red, blue, white, grey and orange. One for each member of his family lost. He wasn't sure why he did it, but it felt … right. The scent of the candles mingled into something strange and alien, as though they shouldn't really be together. But Henry kept them together nonetheless.

"Henry?" asked a voice at his door. Learning from his previous mistake, Henry didn't spin round like a caged animal, but merely turned to see who was at his door. It was Rei, changed out of her plugsuit and into her school uniform. Henry didn't get that about Rei. She never seemed to wear anything _but_ her school uniform or plugsuit. Even Misato and Asuka had casual wear.

"Oh, hi, Rei. Weren't you getting checked up in the medical bay?"

"They let me out. I want to know something."

"Fire away."

"Why did you do it?"

"Do what?" asked Henry, as though she was avoiding the question on purpose.

"Why did you help me earlier?"

"Rei, Shinji and Asuka aren't the only pilots here. We need all the help we can get. Also, you aren't any less important than them."

"We're only support pilots."

"Only because our Evangelions aren't as powerful as theirs. It doesn't make you or me any less important."

Rei paused for a while. "What are the candles for?" she asked.

"For my family. I dunno why, but I wanted to do this."

"Is family important?"

Henry scratched his head. "Well, sure. Don't you have any family?"

Silence. Rei could have frozen solid and you wouldn't be able to tell the difference. Henry was about to go over and poke her to make sure she was actually awake when she said, "I don't have a family."

"Second Impact?"

Rei didn't answer that one at all. "Henry?"

"What?"

"What do you think of Commander Ikari?"

Henry had to think about that one. "I don't know. I haven't met him since coming here. He seems to be the kind of man who's always there but never there, if you get my drift."

"He's Shinji's father."

"I know. Well, I figured."

"What do you think of Shinji?"

"Honestly?"

"Yes."

"I think he's a bit whiny, hasn't got half the guts he should have, he's psychologically predisposed to subordination, he can't seem to make a decision for himself, and he's a little to quick to decide to kill the Angels. But he genuinely seems to care about you, me and Asuka. He's the kind of person who wants what's best for everyone else, because he thinks that will make him happy. And mostly he just wants his father to be proud of him, to see him as more than just another kid."

Rei didn't answer. She just turned on her heel and left.

Henry stared at the line of candles. The black one was starting to burn down a lot. He sighed. Soon enough, he'd find out that another one was dead, and he would have to light another. But now was not that time.

He drew a battered photo from his pocket. Well, not so much a photograph as a skilled drawing. He smiled.

_I will make you proud of me. Just a little longer._


	8. Rei

"Commander Ikari?"

"Yes, Rei?"

They were sitting at either end of a long table, eating lunch. Rei was eating a small meal of rice and vegetables, Ikari roast beef.

"Is eating … an enjoyable activity?"

"Yes," he replied patiently, far too used to Rei's strange conversation topics to be fazed.

"Is it enjoyable to cook food?"

"Yes."

"And … is it enjoyable to eat with someone else?"

"Yes."

"Would it be enjoyable … to eat with your son?"

He was taken aback at that. He looked up at Rei, his orange-tinted lenses forming impervious barriers to his eyes as the light bounced off them. "No, I'm afraid. I don't have the time."

But as he stared, Rei stared back. She stared in exactly the same way his wife, Yui, used to. If he imagined that icy-blue bob-cut and those red eyes as brown, he could almost see her looking at him, that faint smile on her face that she always put on went she wanted something. "Please, Gendo … for Shinji's sake …"

Ikari Gendo sighed. "Very well. I'll do it. Why did you want to know?"

"I want to hold a dinner party. For Shinji and Asuka, and Misato, Ritsuko, Kaji … and you. I want to cook for you all. Can I do it?"

"Yes, fine, Rei."

"On Saturday?"

Gendo consulted his mental schedule. "I have a meeting with the SEELE then … how about Sunday evening?"

Rei almost smiled. "Thank you, Commander Ikari."

Now Gendo was really confused. Since when did Rei care about Shinji's welfare?

And since when did she _thank_ people?

/

Sunday morning, Nevada. The helicopter dropship rose slowly out of the vast circular silo, an enormous cruciform support frame hanging underneath by high-tensile cable reverse-engineered from Tunniel's flesh. Fixed to the frame was a skyscraper-sized, midnight blue humanoid machine. It had tall fins on its shoulders and a deadened look in its glassy lens eyes.

The helicopter turned to the west and set off on its long trip over the former Pacific Ocean. A thunderstorm was brewing over the desert, but the dropship and its precious cargo were sturdy enough to stand such trivial matters.

/

"What's going on?" asked Asuka indignantly. She was confronting Misato and Ritsuko over the latest idea that had popped up from nowhere.

A storage bay was open, and Unit-02 was being slowly winched into it, looking like a lifeless doll now; its crimson armour seemingly dulled by its pilot's sour mood.

"Unit-03 is being shipped over here today. It is the most powerful and advanced Evangelion in the world now that Units-04 and -05 are out of action."

"What happened to them? And what does that have to do with Unit-02?"

"We don't know about Unit-04, but Unit-05 blew up taking down a loose Angel. And the Vatican Treaty means we are only allowed three operational Evas per HQ," chipped in Ritsuko in that professional tone of hers.

"So get rid of Unit-N! It's not even under our control!"

"Which is why we can't. We have no official jurisdiction over another country's Evas."

"What about Unit-00? It's not even operational!"

"Asuka, please," said Misato, starting to drop the friendly façade. She'd been to the bar with an old friend the previous night. Well, Kaji was more than a friend. And it was more than a few drinks, so she had a hangover. She didn't need this shit from Asuka. "We're stretching it as it is. And we need to prioritise our own. Unit-02 _will_ go into storage."

"And what of Unit-03's pilot? Stupid Shinji? The commander's doll?"

"Actually, we wanted you to pilot it. That's why Unit-02 is being stored."

Asuka was taken aback, but tried not to show it. She would get to pilot the most powerful weapon on Earth, and all because she had proven to be better than the others! "Whatever," she muttered, and stalked off. She had to shout at _someone_.

The lift only had one other occupant; Rei. She _hated_ Rei. How could anyone be so subservient? Even Stupid Shinji wasn't _that_ much of a doormat.

They stood in awkward silence for a long time. Asuka cursed the slow elevators.

"So … what do you really think of the idiot?" she snapped, unable to take the unusually still girl's silence any longer.

"The idiot?"

"Yeah. Stupid Shinji."

"… I don't know."

"I figured. Do you ever think for yourself, or are you just the Commander's doll?"

"I am not a doll." To anyone else, this would have sounded like a statement of impartial fact, but those who knew Rei well enough would tell the glimmer of annoyance in her voice.

"Then don't act like one!" shouted Asuka, bringing her hand round to give Rei a hefty slap to bring the girl to her senses.

It never connected.

Rei had caught her by the wrist with her left hand, and dotted Asuka in the eye with her right. It happened so fast Asuka never saw the punch coming, or even expected that Rei was capable of such a thing. She reeled, gasping in shock at the pain and that Rei had actually retaliated to something.

Rei, for her part, could not understand what this feeling in her was. She knew about the production and concentration of cortisol in the blood and all of the biology behind the action, but the _why_ eluded her. She let go of the now-black-eyed Asuka just before the lift arrived at the floor with a faint _ping_.

"You're just as stupid as he is, you know that?" fumed Asuka, storming out of the elevator.


	9. Evangelion Unit 03

"You all right, Asuka?" asked Misato in a friendly way as the car rolled on towards the landing site for Unit-03. Asuka had been sulking all the way there, and there was a dark bruise over one eye. Misato was worried. Had she got in a fight?

Asuka grunted. She had half a mind to tell Misato what Rei had done, but she knew she couldn't. Firstly, she was still angry about the impoundment of Unit-02. Secondly, Rei was such a goody-two-shoes that no-one would believe her anyway.

"I know you're annoyed about your Eva. But it was all we can do. Unit-N isn't under our control at all; we don't have the power to do that."

Grunt.

"We'll paint it red. Okay?" Misato asked with a smirk.

Another grunt.

/

"Misato?"

"What's up, Asuka?"

Asuka was in the cable car leading up to the bridge for access to the entry plug, getting changed into her new plugsuit. It was a red and creamy-tan affair that was even more form-fitting than normal. Misato said they had to use a test suit until the Eva could be programmed to recognise her own plugsuit.

"Not much. I just fancied a chat, y'know?"

"Okay, well … what did you want to talk about?"

"Well … thanks for letting me be pilot. And all that."

"You do realise that this training run will clash with Rei's dinner party?"

"Oh, that. I didn't want to go. I'd rather pilot an Eva any day."

"It would have meant a lot to Shinji if you'd gone."

"Why would I want to go to some stupid dinner party anyway? I've got Eva's to pilot, Angels to kill. I can't waste time with such trivial matters."

Misato almost chuckled at the other end.

"And what do I care for Shinji, anyway?" Asuka added. "He's a useless pilot, and he only gets preferential treatment 'cos he's the commander's son."

"Says the girl who I saw cooking for him the other day."

"That was nothing! I was trying to prove that anything he could do, I can do better!"

"Still got Rei for competition, though."

"Shut up. Anyway, what pervert designed these suits anyway? I feel like some cheap whore."

"Asuka, you know why. The suits have to be form fitting. Excess folds and material causes interference."

The car shuddered to a halt and Asuka stashed her casual clothes and the phone in her sports bag. "Showtime," she said, stepping out into the sunlight.

/

"… Synchronisation pattern stable. Okay Asuka, ready to go."

Asuka exhaled a breath of LCL, exhilarated. The Eva smelled fresh and clean inside. Un-lived in, so to speak. "Okay, here we go!" she said.

The screen suddenly shut down, re-booting into a chaotic mess of red and black. A bright light seemed to shine below her plug, pulling her down into it. Whit crosses of light shot up, giggling maliciously in high-pitched, girlish voices, and Asuka uttered a cry that no-one heard.

/

"What?" asked Shinji, horrified at what the men said.

The explosion. The plug collapse. The bodies being carried from the ruins of the site.

He followed them to the car, and they set off for NERV HQ before he even truly processed what was happening.

/

Somewhere in the 'dead' area of Tokyo-3, the NERV authorities knocked on a non-descript door of an unnamed apartment block that should have been demolished long ago were it not for the fact that the planning got delayed by such minor inconveniences as, to quote, 'a fucking Angel attack'. Letters that looked like bills were stuck in the mailbox as though the occupant never knew what else to do with them. The man rapped on the blank metal door. Something could be heard bubbling inside. A pale-haired girl with distinctive red eyes opened the door.

Minutes later she left with them. The soup sat, forgotten, on the stove.


	10. Bardiel

"Unit-01, your target is the Ninth Angel. Kill it quickly before it can do any more damage."

Shinji's heart leapt at hearing his father's voice. Was it joy he felt, or fear?

"Where's Misato? Is she alright?"

"She will be fine, but that is of no consequence. Your priority is to destroy the Angel."

In the control centre, Ikari Gendo surveyed the bridge below, and the giant heads-up display showing everything that Shinji was looking at.

Fuyutsuki walked up behind him. "Commander, Unit-01 is not combat-ready. Is the pilot stable?"

"It matters not. This would be the perfect opportunity to test the dummy plug."

"The dummy plug? But … it's still a prototype … we don't know …"

"All will go according to plan, Fuyutsuki."

Shinji heard the Angel before he saw it; the deep boom of its footsteps and the crumping sound of the military's foolish attempts to slow it down.

A dark shape strode towards him, across the rice paddies. The setting sun was behind its head like a cinnabar halo. It's AT field was like a second skin; a shimmering psychedelic shroud dotted with detonation clouds of missiles. It, bizarrely, made no attempt to stop them; its red eyes were aflame, and even from that distance Shinji had no doubt what it was looking for.

Him.

It stalked closer. Shinji's heart began to race, and he braced for a fight. Then something caught his eye. Was it the broad shoulders and triangular torso? Was it the long arms with the tall shoulder fins? Or was it the distinctive half-fig-leaf insignia?

"Wait! That's …"

/

"Dr Akagi, what's going on?"

The whole headquarters was on red alert, and there was a hint of panic in the air. But Henry felt like an island of calm, didn't understand what the panic was about, and needed to find out _fast_.

"Parkinson, it's the Ninth Angel."

"What? So soon?"

"Yes. Shinji's already been mobilised."

They reached the bridge. The dark form was striding purposefully toward the camera, which Henry assumed was Shinji. The bridge was in utter panic; Misato was still in the medical bay, and Commander Ikari wasn't present. Ritsuko herself had a bandage wound around her head like a hachimaki.

"Hang on a moment," said Henry, stopping dead. "That's Evangelion-03! Isn't Asuka piloting that thing?"

"Not anymore," shouted one of the bridge staff, a man named Aoba. "Asuka plunged down the plug and then we lost all contact."

"The Americans deny everything, of course," said Ritsuko. "Apparently the only thing that went wrong since they made that Eva is the unexpected thunderstorm they flew through."

"Thunderstorm?" asked Henry, realisation as well as horror dawning on him. "No …"

"What is it, Parkinson?" asked Ritsuko sternly.

"Bardiel, the Angel of Mist. The thundercloud _was_ the Angel; it must have slipped into the Evangelion when they flew through!"

"They may God have mercy on it."

"More like mercy on Shinji. Dr Akagi, please let me be deployed."

"No, Parkinson. Commander Ikari specifically stated that only Shinji should be deployed. That is final. Unit-N is not combat ready. If worst comes to the worst, the dummy system will kick in."

/

"No … I can't do this … is Asuka still in there?"

"Shinji, that is an Angel. Your job is to kill it."

"But I …"

Shinji never finished his sentence. Bardiel hunkered down and pounced forwards, folding into a kick to the chest. Unit-01 collapsed; Shinji hadn't prepared for an attack. The Angel squatted down on top of him, grasped his Evangelion's throat and began to squeeze.

Shinji tried at once to both stop the Angel strangling him and to see if he could tell whether the entry plug was still in. The Angel had clearly forsaken its Eva's humanity; its faceplate had cracked off, revealing a deep mouth with huge metal teeth that were more like cutting plates the size of cars attached to its jaw.

Suddenly, something made him gasp, and it wasn't the throttling. A small hump in the middle of its back kept pushing out, but was stopped by the thick growth of neon-blue flesh over the top.

"Asuka's still in there! She can't get out!"

"That is none of you concern. It is imperative that the Angel dies."

"But if I kill that Angel, Asuka will die!"

"And if you do not, then you and your Eva will be destroyed, NERV will be compromised and she will _still_ die."

"No!" choked Shinji, for Bardiel had redoubled its efforts. Literally; the fins had snapped off, and a second pair of arms rapidly grew out from the breaches, grasping him as tight as the Angel's wiry tendons would allow. "I won't hurt Asuka!"

Shinji vaguely heard someone say something about the Angel trying to corrupt Unit-01, then his father's voice came back.

"Very well. Activate the dummy system. The boy is clearly useless to us now."

Everything went dark and Shinji took a deep breath now that he didn't feel like he was about to die. There was a whirring noise behind him, and something folded out over the top of the cockpit, closing down over his hands. A bulky display appeared over his eyes, so he couldn't see properly outside. A simple message flashed up on the screen.

DUMMY SYSTEM ONLINE. REROUTING CONTROL POINT.

/

"Are you crazy? Activating the dummy system right now? Asuka's gonna die in there!"

Ritsuko shook her head sadly as the screen flickered back into life. "I know. But it's the best shot we have."

"Do you even know what that thing is?"

"It's an AI designed to act as a stand-in for a pilot."

Henry sighed, smiling ruefully. "You're more naïve than you look if you believe that."

"What do you mean, Parkinson?"

"We should never have made them."

/

The screen in front of Shinji flickered into a view that looked like what he would see if he himself were piloting; the same view as the bridge.

Unit-01 got to its feet, its eyes like hot coals. As quick as a flash of lightning, it reached up and closed its own hands around Bardiel's own throat. But it was angry, and it could squeeze harder than the Angel could. There was a loud crack as the Angel/Eva's vertebrae snapped. Its grip slackened, and its arms fell with a crash to the ground.

Shinji breathed a sigh of relief. At least it was over quickly.

The dummy system, however, had other ideas.

/

"What is it doing?" asked Ibuki, as Unit-01 seemed to lean over the fallen Angel. "I can't get it to stop!"

Henry grimaced. "Now you've gone and done it."

"Done what?" asked Ritsuko.

Her question was answered by Unit-01 plunging its hand through Bardiel's abdominal armour and tearing out a good fistful of internal organs, which it threw away carelessly. They landed with a sickeningly wet smack.

The bridge watched with utmost horror and disgust as the Evangelion tore chunks of flesh and organs out of the fallen creature like a predator who had paused to celebrate its victory in its own macabre way. Only two didn't seem sickened to the core by the sight. The first was Gendo; unseen by anyone, he stole himself a little smirk as the carnage unfolded.

The other was Henry. Though not as much as the others, he still felt sick at the sight, but even more so he felt angry. Absolute fury. "This is what the dummy system is, Dr Akagi. It's not an AI. It's an Angel's mind. The mind of a monster."

They could hear Shinji's pleas for them to stop, but there was nothing they could do as the Evangelion decided to snack on the savaged carcass. Ibuki was violently sick on the floor, her nausea and revulsion finally getting the better of her. Henry went over to comfort her, wrapping an arm around her trembling shoulders but unable to look away himself.

The Evangelion had found Asuka's entry plug, tearing it from the remains with its jaws.

There was a crunch, a scream, and Henry finally decided he'd seen enough. He tapped the keys of Ibuki's keyboard as best he could remember. It worked; the override that had been blocked out by the dummy system's berserk mind finally made it, breaking the dummy's grip.

"Right," he said. "I'm going now. Taking Miss Ibuki here to the medical bay. Can someone clear up the mess? And I don't just mean the Angel. Come on, now; get up …"


	11. Tantrum

There was a great booming sound echoing through the Geofront, accompanied by a great shaking.

"What's going on?" asked Henry, having just finished mopping; all of the bridge staff seemed to have conveniently remembered things that they needed to do urgently.

"Shinji's in a bad mood," replied Aoba, whom Henry had just run into on the way back from dropping of the cleaning supplies. Ibuki's seat at the console was still empty; she was still feeling too ill to return to her post, her paleness now accompanied by a faint whimpering.

"What? I thought Evangelion-01 was out of power?"

"So did we," said Misato, walking into the bridge. She was wearing a plaster cast over her left arm, but didn't look too bashed up otherwise.

"Please, Shinji! Try to calm down!" Hyuga yelled into the mic as another crash echoed through the room.

"No!" Shinji's enraged voice bellowed from the speakers. "You made me do that to Asuka, and you dare tell me to calm down?"

"Shinji, that's enough! Asuka's being treated as we speak, just stop this!"

"I trusted you, Father! I thought you were going to actually respect me! But you just want to use me to do your dirty work, don't you?"

"Increase the LCL pressure to maximum," Gendo's voice ordered.

"Commander Ikari, are you sure that's necessary?" asked Henry.

"Yes. We don't have time to deal with a child's tantrum."

"I'm sorry, Shinji," said Henry, before increasing the LCL pressure in the plug to 500%. The effect was similar to giving someone pure oxygen to breathe; he was knocked out in seconds, and Unit-01 ceased its rage-fuelled assault on the Geofront, standing atop the underground pyramid like a sentinel.

/

"Disobeying direct orders. Treason. Sabotage to the Geofront. These are all severe offences, Shinji."

"So what?" asked Shinji quietly. He was standing, handcuffed, in the Commander's office. "What does it matter?"

"You do realise that these offences threaten your station as pilot?"

"I don't care anymore. I used to think that this is what I wanted, but now I'm not so sure. Fire me. Stop me piloting. Pretend I don't exist. It worked so far, didn't it?"

Shinji turned to walk out. Gendo didn't stop him. But he did say, "you were a promising pilot. It's a shame it had to come to this."

Shinji didn't look around. "You're right," he said venomously. "I was never more than another pilot to you, was I?"

/

"Shinji, please don't go," said Misato gently. Shinji stood in the lobby to the apartment, putting on his outdoor shoes and deliberately not looking at her.

"Why not?" he said, still in the jaded monotone she knew meant he was unable to be persuaded. "I don't belong with your world anymore. I don't belong with NERV, or the Evas, or you."

"Shinji, you can keep living here, for crying out loud! You need to live somewhere!"

"I'll manage. I have since Dad left."

She held out the old S-DAT. "You left this behind."

"I don't want it."

"But …"

"I meant to leave it."

"Shinji, please," said another voice. Henry had come in from the other room, where he was working on artwork of Sahaquiel and Bardiel. "Listen to yourself. This isn't what you're like."

Shinji didn't look at him. "I don't care."

"You can't escape NERV. They'll keep tabs on you for the rest of your life. And you never forget what you killed."

"Have you ever killed, Henry?" he asked with a grim smirk.

"No," he said automatically.

"Liar. You killed that little cat. It was trying to be your friend. You still have its collar in your room."

Misato stared at Henry in horror. This was news to her.

"It was a long time ago. And I meant the Angels, and you know it."

"Whatever. I'll see you at school, Henry."

"Your father was going to come, you know," added Misato feebly.

Shinji paused.

"The dinner party. The one Rei was going to put on. It was for you and him to get together. She did it for you."

"Ikari Gendo is no father of mine," Shinji said quietly, and opened the door.

Misato seemed flustered. She needed to say something. "Shinji, I … I wanted to say …"

SLAM. He was gone. Off on one of his 'walks', which really meant running as far away as he could. Misato gave Henry a stern look.

"You keep the collar of a dead cat in your room?" she asked.

"It was a long time ago, Misato. Kids are cruel. Especially if the world seems to be ending around their ears. It was a stray, as it is. Is it true that you've got the hots for Shinji?"

Now Misato was _really_ flustered. "H-How do you know that!"

"Because that's the most obvious thing for you to want to say in a big goodbye, because your body language suggests that you're in love, because your voice goes all soft and feathery when you talk to him, because your pheromone levels have shot through the roof, and because you blushed like a setting sun when I suggested it."

Misato slumped against the wall. "I'm that obvious, huh?"

"Just a little. With as little in my life as there is, I tend to notice little things. Don't worry, your secret's safe with me. I guess now there's no secrets between us. My cat, your secret heart-throb for Shinji-kun."

Misato gave a weak smile. "You promise you won't tell anyone?"

"Lips are sealed. Cross my heart or hope to spontaneously turn into an Angel and all that."

"Don't joke about things like that."


	12. Back Where We Started

"So … this is it, is it?" asked Ibuki with a weak laugh. "One pilot, one-and-a-half working Evas and no clue how to proceed."

"You're forgetting about me," added Henry, whose sitting next to her at the committee table along with Ritsuko, Misato, the rest of the main bridge crew and Fuyutsuki. "I can still help Rei."

Ibuki leant on his shoulder. She felt strangely safe in his presence. He had kept checking on her when she was in the medical bay, fetching things or doing small jobs for her. Apparently, he had helped with developing the dummy system; he felt somewhat responsible for her condition. The only other person she had felt like this for was Ritsuko. "Oh, yeah; we've got Mr. Non-Angel-Killer here too."

"But that doesn't change the fact that we've still got God knows how many Angels to fight off," added Ritsuko.

"So basically, we're at square one again?" asked Aoba.

"Shit can't get much worse than this," said Misato, getting to her feet. "Well, there's nothing we can do now; Shinji's done a runner, and we have no need to chase him."

"Are you sure?" asked Fuyutsuki.

"I know Shinji. He's like a cat; he comes home when he's hungry."

/

"Are you feeling okay?" Henry asked Ibuki as they left the meeting.

"Oh? Yeah, I'm fine."

"You don't look or sound too good. How do you normally get home; do you drive or …"

"No, I drive."

"Well, you can't drive in this state; you'll be a road hazard. I'll drive."

Ibuki frowned. "You can drive? Aren't you only sixteen?"

"Yeah. Just got my license before coming to Japan."

"I meant you're too young."

Henry smirked. "Not in Russia."

She sighed. He was right; she was starting feel slightly feverish. "You win. My car's down in the staff car park."

"Cool. Tell me how get to your place."

/

"… Turn left here."

Henry gave the steering wheel a little twist, and the car set off down a little dual carriageway leading out of Tokyo-3 and into the expanse of rice paddies that fringed the city like a watery halo. Ibuki was surprised; Henry _was_ a good driver. The last time Misato had driven her Ibuki had decided that roller-coasters were less life-threatening than Misato's driving. And the one time they tested to see if Rei could handle driving, she seemed to not understand that pushing a car to its limit was not too appreciated by its passengers, and Ibuki vowed never to let Rei drive again. Rei's problem wasn't control; she could easily handle a car travelling in excess of 150 in tight city streets with mechanical precision. Her problem was _not understanding why you shouldn't go that fast_.

As if he could read her mind, Henry smirked. "You seriously doubted me, Miss Ibuki?"

She, in spite of herself, chuckled. It was obvious in hindsight that he was not the sort who would go out joyriding a car unless he knew what he was doing. "How old do you really think you are, anyway? You seem more grown-up than half of the staff."

"Aww, come on; are they _really_ that immature?"

"Have you been to one of their sake nights?" she asked with a rueful smile. Her last such occasion had her nearly drown in the punch bowl before she was fished out by a (sober) Ritsuko.

"Hmm. Can't say I have. Can I ask you a question, Miss Ibuki?"

"Just call me Maya. Everyone else does. Turn onto the highway here."

Henry steered onto the highway, and pressed down the accelerator. "Why do _you _work for NERV?"

Maya thought for a moment. A long moment. "It's the best paid job in the area. Plus, my computer skills keep me being useful. I could never settle down into a desk job."

Henry nodded, and they sat in silence for a while. "Are you afraid of the Angels, Maya?"

"I'm not sure anymore."

"What do you mean?"

"I'm not sure whether to be more afraid of the Angels or the Evas. I mean, you saw the carnage earlier."

"'He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man.' Once an Evangelion sheds its humanity, what is left but the beast within?"

"What indeed?"

"I wish we didn't have to fight Angels off all the time."

"This is our junction. Yeah, I guess. I don't even _like_ what we're doing here. I just do my job."

"I understand. I don't like killing the Angels either. It feels wrong to destroy so perfect an organism, when they could almost be considered our brothers and sisters."

"What?"

Henry was unfazed. "Genetically, Angels are almost identical to humans. It's why humans can pilot Evangelions; they aren't just robots, you know."

"Then what are they?"

"They're living entities, kept under physical and psychological limiters at all times. Like slumbering giants. The plug systems bind directly to the Evangelion's central nervous system, enabling the synched human to control the Evangelion as though their own body."

"Stop talking, please. I'll probably puke again if you don't."

"Point taken. Let's talk about something else."


	13. Maya

"Thank you for driving me home, Henry."

Henry bowed as best he could, looking as though kneeling in prayer. "My pleasure, Maya. It was nothing."

"How are you going to get back to NERV headquarters?"

Henry shrugged. "Dunno. Guess I'll catch a train."

Maya tutted. "It's getting late, and it's been a long day. Stay over for the night. I'll take you back tomorrow."

"Are you sure? I don't want to intrude or anything …"

"You won't be intruding. And I could use some company."

"Won't it be a little weird? We're like strangers."

"We work together. _And _you drove me home."

Henry sighed. _Oh well, what's the worst that could happen?_

__/

"Thank you for the meal!" they chorused.

Maya had changed into casual clothes. It was then that Henry realised he'd never seen her in anything other than her NERV uniform. She wore a thin, white cotton t-shirt with a decorative paulownia print in the corner and a pair of baggy old jeans that looked as though they had been used for decorating. It was simple, but it worked.

Henry tucked in. It was delicious; he'd marked her for a vegetarian, but she had cooked up what would have been beef in black bean sauce were it not for the rarity of real beef. And it was _delicious_. Even Shinji's cooking didn't really compare.

"Are you seeing anyone?" he asked, trying not to sound intrusive.

Maya gave a smirk, slurping up some noodles. "Would I have invited you in if I was? It would have raised some … _interesting_ questions."

"_How_ are you single? Guys would be queuing around the block for food this good!"

"It's nothing, really. Just some leftovers."

"Well, your _leftovers_ is good enough for me to forget that 99% of the beef is artificial. I'm serious, Maya; this is really good."

Maya blushed. "I … guess I just don't want to earn a man's heart through his stomach."

"Well, and the fact that you're young, good-looking, and really kind to everyone. Oh, sorry; did I say that out loud?"

Maya laughed. "Stop teasing me, Henry! Please!"

Henry smirked as well. "Very well. But this is still very tasty."

Maya set down her bowl. "So; tell me a little about yourself."

"About myself? Where do you want me to begin?"

"Well, what do you like doing?"

"Hmm … I like reading. And drawing. I draw the Angels a lot."

"Do you like the Angels?"

Henry scratched the back of his neck. "I'm not sure _like_ is the right word. They inspire me. I fear and respect them with equal measure. As should we all. They are capable of great things. Terrible, yes, but great."

"I don't like them at all," said Maya, draining her glass of water. "I mean, this is our planet. If they didn't try to take it, we wouldn't have to fight them."

Henry leant forwards. "Maya?"

"Yes, what is it?"

"Can I ask you a serious question?"

"Go ahead."

"Do you have any sake?"

Maya was taken aback. "Sake?" she asked, as though she hadn't heard him properly.

"Yeah. I've never tried it before, and as I'm crashing at your pad for the night, well, a few drinks can't be too bad, can they?"

Maya gave him an impish grin, and pulled a bottle of the deep brown alcohol from the cupboard. "It's nasty stuff, but it's alcohol and it's cheap. Beer's too expensive for my wage." She frowned, as a thought struck her. "You're too young to drink."

"Not in Russia. And not here, as you bought it."

/

"… So next thing I know, we're stuck in the mountains, the car was upside-down and Misato was high off her tits on some freaky mushrooms we found, and I said …"

"'I knew we should have turned left!" said Henry, who guessed the punchline about thirty seconds previously. Both of them cackled with mirth; a good bottle and a half of sake had been downed in the last hour, mostly by Maya. Despite her protests, she could drink like a fish when she set her mind to it. Henry had drunk, too, and quite a lot at that, but not enough to be intoxicated. Maya was already accelerating towards the hazy lands of Drunkenness and The-Mother-Of-All-Hangovers- In-The-Morning.

"I think that might be enough sake for one night," he said, gently lifting the cheap booze and cup from her hands and placing them carefully on her bedside table. They had relocated to her room, which was rather bare aside from a neat wardrobe and a couple of stacks of computer magazines.

Maya fell backwards onto her mattress, her small frame almost swallowed by her thick duvet and pillows. "I'm glad I made you stay, Henry; it's been a fun evening."

"I can make it more fun, you know," said Henry, smooth as silk. There was an animal look in his eye, like someone who knows what they want and how to get it.

"Please do," purred Maya, peeling off her t-shirt and jeans.

_Humans are such a predictable species_, Henry thought, but gave a wolfish grin that seemed to contain too many teeth for the human mouth. It took a second look to realise that they were very narrow and sharp, like his Evangelion's. And slightly too long, so they overlapped. He straddled Maya, now only wearing a set of plain black underwear. Henry could almost feel the lusting pheromones emanating from her body in tangible waves. She _wanted _him. Badly, by the smell of it. Again, predictable.

He rested his hands on her bare stomach, feeling the muscle beneath the skin buck and twist as Maya gasped.

"Your hands are so _cold_!" she gasped. "How are they so cold?"

"Oh, but your skin is so _hot_!" he leaned down, clearly dwarfing her now that she was no longer standing up. "Think of it as another little quirk of mine," he purred in her ear. He sounded almost predatorial, like a big cat claiming a female for itself. Maya's heart did a backflip.

"Maya, I want to tell you a secret," he whispered. "You mustn't tell a soul. Do you understand?"

Maya smiled, eyes half-closed as desire claimed her mind for its own. "Anything for you, my angel."

"Be careful using that analogy around me," said Henry, sitting back up but in doing so pinning Maya to the bed by her waist. She was too far gone in her haze of lust and alcohol to realise that, whatever he did, she couldn't run away. He slowly unzipped his jacket, tossing it to the floor unceremoniously. Then he slowly, seductively even, unbuttoned his shirt, throwing that off too.

Maya gasped. She was expecting something like heavily toned pecs and smooth skin. What she hadn't expected was the mesmerising, red-orange orb that broke the skin of the middle of his chest like a plate of armour. His flesh had puckered around the edge as though trying to hold it in.

"That's a … a …"

"An S2 engine? I know."

"But what is it doing in _you_?"

Henry leaned back, staring at the ceiling. "Bethany Base is _the_ top branch of NERV for research and development. They constantly run tests on new science. I sold my body to them. For science."

"They … _experimented_ on you?"

"Correct. They attempted to find out whether an S2 engine was an effective substitute for a heart. I am living proof that it works."

"But _why_ did you let them?"

"I gave myself to NERV when I left home. They were the only thing I could see that was left in the world worth working for. It didn't hurt. And I have more energy than I would otherwise have." He leant back over her. "I'm telling you, Maya, because I trust you to keep my secret. Listen to me; _no-one can know of this_. I mean no-one. NERV covered up the whole operation. Case closed. Officially, the surgery never happened. Not even the Geofront knows. Can I trust you?" Henry knew that he could trust her, but he decided to get her drunk as a failsafe. With any luck, she won't even remember come the morning.

"Of course you can," she said. "I don't care if the world would think you a freak, I will still love you, and I will honour your wish."

"Is that just the alcohol speaking?"

"It's my heart speaking." She reached out and stroked the smooth Core. She'd always wondered what an Angel's Core felt like. No-one she'd ever heard of had ever touched one with their bare hands; the pilot's were locked inside their Evangelions all the time in battles, and no human had ever got close enough to try.

She was special.

Maya had never felt special before. Throughout school she was always overshadowed in popularity; that strange computer-chick who was always second-best, but lacked the confidence to aim for the top. At home, until her family fell apart in the wake of Second Impact, she was the middle child of three, and never really _shone_. But now she could say that she was one of about half-a-dozen people in the world who had ever felt a Core.

It had the texture of glass, or highly polished metal, but felt like rubber in its pliability. Somehow … unnatural, but at once the very definition of natural, making her feel slightly obscure and artificial by comparison.

"I … I want you, Henry … I want you inside me …"

Henry arched an eyebrow. "Aren't I too young?"

"Not in Japan."

Henry flicked the bedside light off.


	14. Old Friends, New Friends

"Henry, I … I want to apologise for last night."

Henry had got up long before the alarm, and was all ready for the day ahead by the time Maya woke up, groaning. She felt absolutely shattered, but she couldn't for the life of her remember having more fun in one night than last night.

"Apologise?" Henry asked, pausing in the act of making the bed and speaking in an I-know-what-you're-going-to-say-and-have-already-prepared-a-counter-argument tone. "Whatever for?"

"Well … it wasn't very responsible of me to get drunk like that, and acting like a harlot, and sleeping with you. I want to apologise if I came across in a negative light. I shouldn't have done it."

"Miss Ibuki," said Henry, knowing how to play her in times like this. "There is no need to apologise. We were both rather immature last night. Unprofessional. But it doesn't matter. Do you regret what we did?"

"Well … no … but …"

"Then stop worrying about it. At worst, what happened? Two mates had some fun and carried it too far. That's no crime. Adam and Eve were not cast from Paradise for enjoying intimacy."

Maya turned away. Henry cocked his head, reading her body language as anxious and secretive. "There's someone else, isn't there?"

"Promise you won't tell?"

"How old do I look, Maya, five?"

"R-Ritsuko-sempai …"

Henry nodded, dragging the covers over the bed awkwardly. He decided to shut up until she chose to speak again. Sure enough …

"She doesn't even notice me, Henry. I love her, and she doesn't even look at me."

"You have a crush on her," said Henry sagely, padding over to her. He squatted down on his haunches, and she sat down on the bed. "If you're in love, I won't intrude. But I will always be there for you, if you need it."

"What? But … last night …"

"Relax. Just forget it ever happened, if it makes you happy. But your heart will only break if you don't choose between me or Ritsuko. But I will honour your decision whoever you choose. Now, you need to get to work, and me to school. I drive?"

"No, I'll do it."

/

"What was Ibuki-san doing driving you in?" asked Shinji at the first opportunity, which happened to be during lunch break on the school rooftop. Henry was lounging around, letting the hot concrete paving ease the pain in the small of his back from too much exertion.

"Hmm? Oh, yeah. She had to pick up some groceries in town and offered to give me a lift."

"That's all you're giving me. I know there's more to it than that."

"It's nice to see you, too. Misato's been worried sick, by the way."

"Henry, spill. I'm interested."

"Oh, I give in; I got her a coffee yesterday and she decided to repay the favour."

"Seriously?"

"Would I ever lie to you?"

Shinji decided not to answer that. Shinji decided not to answer that. The truth was the answer had to be a _yes_. Any conversation with Henry seemed to involve cryptic poetics, half-answers and changes of subject. "Come on, lessons start in ten."

Henry grunted his assent. Shinji left down the stairwell. Henry didn't really process it. He was too distracted by thinking about Maya.

She was right about one thing, certainly; nothing about her really screamed 'special'. She was plain, quiet, and had an unimaginative wardrobe of functional but not very daring clothes. Her haircut actually made her look a little like an older, female version of Shinji. But Henry felt something tug in the S2 engine that was the closest he had to a heart at the thought of her face, her voice, her searing warmth on his grave-chill skin.

Was this love? He wasn't sure. He'd never really known what love was.

"INCOMING!" A scream penetrated his musing, shortly followed by a faceful of someone's huge breasts.

Henry, reacting by instinct more than anything, pushed the intruder off him before he suffocated, flipping onto all fours. A girl about his age was rummaging around on the concrete for something, eyes squinted. She was wearing military cargo trousers and a white blouse, her long dark brown hair tied into pigtails. Henry sighed, and handed her the glasses that had landed next to him.

The girl took them gratefully, smiling impishly when she saw who it was.

"Henry! Good to see ya!" She made to hug him, but he remained stoically stony-faced.

"Makinami, you _died_. I _watched_ you die."

"That?" she asked, nonchalantly waving it away. "Hell, Henry, it'll take more that a self-destructing base and a pissed-off Angel to kill off Mari Illustrious Makinami!"

Henry still refused to hug the girl, so she dropped her arms disappointedly. "Funny. Normal people would _want_ to hug a friend they had believed dead. Guess it's just you being jaded."

Henry padded over to the lip of the roof, using the steel railings to support himself as he stood up. "Why did you come here, Makinami?"

"Would you believe me if I said that it was to be with my boyfriend?"

"No. Makinami, I never _was_ your boyfriend."

"I'm hurt," she said in a voice that suggested otherwise. "You smell good. Been doing more piloting recently?"

"Yes. And what has your LCL fetish got to do with anything?"

She didn't answer, but was bundling her parachute into her backpack. "You never did tell me why you turned me down." This time she actually did sound hurt.

"It's because, Makinami, you're a complete psycho in a Evangelion. And not everyone likes boobs like a pair of watermelons. And because …"

"Okay, I get the picture. But I genuinely liked _you_."

"I would say I'm touched, but I really don't care. Go hit on someone else. I'm not interested. But don't expect me to keep mum about you sneaking into Japan."

"Meanie," she said flirtatiously, before setting off.

Henry sighed. Mari Illustrious Makinami. A pilot from the former Bethany Base, pilot of Evangelion-05, and a hot contender for Biggest Hidden Psychopath Award. She was something of a sadomasochist when it came to either Angel fighting or sexual relationships, and had asked him out a long time ago. Henry, naturally, had turned her down.

So what was she doing, sneaking into Japan when she was supposed to have died in the destruction of Bethany Base?


	15. Zeruel

"Kensuke?"

Aida Kensuke, one of Shinji's friends, turned around.

Henry motioned to follow. They snuck around the back of the bike sheds.

"Kensuke, how would you like to pilot an Evangelion?"

The boys bespectacled eyes lit up. "Yeah! … Wait, how did you know I wanted to pilot an Eva?"

Henry was taken aback, but tried not to show it. "I … you never shut up about them. You seem like the kind of person who would want to get in one."

Kensuke had been inside an Evangelion only once, to escape while Shinji had had to fight the Angel Shamshel. But he'd _always_ wanted to be a pilot. He envied Shinji, Rei and Asuka for being pilots. "Sure."

"Well, now Shinji's given up and Asuka's out of it, we need new pilots quick. You seem to me like good pilot material."

"That'd be awesome! You gotta let me!"

Henry grinned, revealing those too-many teeth. "That's good to hear, mate. There's just one problem; NERV don't know about this, so you'll have to shut up about it all. Got it?"

Kensuke smiled conspiratorially. Henry had to fight down his exasperation. _Predictable_. "Listen. I'll let you test pilot my Evangelion. I've got a synch test on Wednesday, so that'll be your cover. I've installed an AI program into it to accommodate for your problems, so you'll pick it up quickly. Think of it like a stabiliser set. You cool with that?"

Kensuke looked like an excitable puppy, so ecstatic was he.

"Afterwards, I'll suggest to NERV that you would make a good pilot. They'll call you in to run an Evangelion. You should, hopefully, have got the basics of piloting by then. After that, who knows? So … you got all of that?"

Kensuke nodded. "I won't tell anyone!" He scampered off like Christmas had come early, and Henry sighed at last. _What an idiot_.

/

Kensuke, after a few initial struggles, picked up the Evangelion's control system quickly. He had just had the huge rail cannon mounted on his back, and was about to begin targeting practises when he heard a siren go off. A screen flashed red next to him; ANGEL ALERT.

"Unit-N!" barked Misato's voice over the comms. "We have a top-priority situation. Get to the following co-ordinates as quickly as possible!"

Kensuke grinned. This was getting cool.

/

The Angel had already vaporised a large hill and several military emplacements. It was already decided that the Angel was too dangerous for conventional evacuation, and the populace of Tokyo-3 had been sent down to the Geofront itself.

"It's okay," Toji assured his younger sister as they sat in the cramped monorail car. "We're going to the Geofront. It's the safest place in the world."

Shinji did not join the conversation. He was staring at the lumbering form of Unit-N far below, presumably doing a training exercise. He wondered whether Henry would be able to take on the Angel with only him and Rei left.

And all because his father was such a jerk.

/

The Angel seemed to be nothing more than a huge black cloak, tattered into ribbons that trailed behind it as it fell. Its face was a bizarrely distorted skull, magenta fire blazing in its hollow, empty eyes.

The Angel was Zeruel, the Angel of Might.

/

Shinji was wandering mindlessly through the corridors of the Geofront, already forgetting that there was no place for him there anymore. He had heard the alarm, and got to Central Dogma as quickly as he could.

He rounded a corner, and spotted something suspicious. More specifically, some_one_.

"Hey!"

/

A deep rumble of the rapid-transit elevators filled the control bridge.

"What the hell was that?" asked Misato.

"An Eva must be heading to the surface!"

"But Rei hasn't logged in yet. It can't be her!"

"We have a confirm on the Unit. It's Unit-02!"

"It can't be! What idiot's driving that thing?"

/

Mari Illustrious Makinami sat up in the cockpit. It felt good to be back inside an Eva, even if it wasn't her own. The LCL in her lungs felt just right, and this new plugsuit was actually the right size for once; her old one was far too tight in the chest.

"Unit-02, please respond!" crackled a voice over the radio, but she ignored it. There was an Angel to kill, and she didn't need them nagging her to get out.

Far overhead, there was a crunch, and a sizeable section on the Tokyo-3 metropolis that hadn't been instantly vaporised by the Angel's plasma beam came crashing to the ground, concrete bubbling from the heat.

"Unit-02, that thing just got through twenty-eight armour levels in a single shot. Get out of there!"

Mari grinned evilly, picking up a pair of skyscraper-sized assault rifles. So it was going to be a challenge, was it?


	16. Henry Exposed

Kensuke could only find one criticism with Unit-N so far; it was _really_ slow. He could, if he really tried, see a dense black mass forcing its way into the cavern, Unit-02 blazing away with its guns.

"Unit-N, prepare to enter artillery gait."

"You got it!" he said, before he realised that they still thought he was Henry. _Oops_.

The voice of the HQ was suddenly very stern. "Unit-N, who are you and where is Henry Parkinson?"

Kensuke sighed. "Aida Kensuke. I don't know where Henry is."

A young woman seemed to take over the mic, certainly not the voice of Misato who had previously been speaking. "Aida, stand down. This is not a game! We need a pilot in there, not some stupid kid!"

"No!" Kensuke realised that his brief time in the Eva was soon to be at an end. "You're gonna need all the help you can get!"

There was a long pause. "… Fine. But don't cock this up. Henry won't be too pleased if his Eva gets ruined."

/

Shinji was gaping in astonishment. Henry stared back in equal amazement.

"I thought you were out there fighting the Angel!"

"I thought _you'd_ given up on us." Henry stared over Shinji's shoulder. "You … you are alone, aren't you?"

"Yeah, why?"

Henry sighed. "I'm worried that my time is short. I need to tell you something."

"What is it?"

"Do you trust me, Shinji? Will you help me if the world turns against me?"

"Yes, damnit! Tell me what you wanted to say!"

Henry lifted the front of his shirt, exposing the crimson disc of his Core. "This."

Shinji struggled to process this. "You … you have … you're not an Angel, are you ?!"

"No, but I'm worried that if this gets discovered, the Geofront will be unlikely to believe me."

"What happened?"

"I was experimented on when I joined NERV. I can use to prove their twisted experiments, but I'm gonna need support."

"Twisted … experiments?"

"They pitched Kensuke against Zeruel with no training. I don't favour his chances."

Shinji gulped. That was why they couldn't find him. How much of an asshole _was_ his father? "Okay, I'll cover for you. Come on, we're gonna get caught if we hang around like this."

He turned to walk away, and Henry seemed to falter. "Shinji …" he whispered.

"What is it, Henry?"

Henry didn't actually answer Shinji. What he did … was _giggle_.

Shinji turned. "What the …"

Henry wasn't on all fours. He was standing tall, taller than Shinji. His longer hair was flying out lazily behind him like a sepulchral breeze was blowing through the clinical white corridor. He was changing visibly; his skull and chest grew narrower, his cheekbones high and fragile and his every cell began to glow with an unearthly radiance. He seemed to be going softer, as though his skin was re-casting itself.

A pale figure stood quite still before him, an oddly sinister smile on its lips. It wasn't quite male or female, but some chimera of bits of both; it had small but noticeable breasts, and a glass-delicate feminine face, but a man's defined muscle tone. Its skinny frame seemed at once rigid and delicate. Through it all, Henry's stern greyish lichen eyes stared out from a crystalline mask, his long Slenderman arms by his sides.

"Henry?"

"Drop the charade, Ikari," Henry said in the haunting voice like the sigh of a lonely chorus. "I'm sure even an idiot like you should be able to work it out."

"What are you supposed to be?" asked Shinji.

Again, it didn't answer him. It started to unbutton the shirt it wore, revealing that swirling bloody Core nestled between its breasts, larger and more prominent than ever. He began to remove the rest of its clothes nonchalantly, and Shinji (in true Shinji fashion) turned away, embarrassed and flustered. But there was something about the Core that seemed … attractive; the hypnotic swirl of crimson and cinnabar like a pattern in the clouds.

"Did you never suspect _why _I knew so much about the Angels? That a pilot with an S2 engine was active in the very NERV headquarters all other Angels tried so hard to break into? That I never even said _who_ I reported to?"

"You're here with orders from Bethany B-"

Shinji felt a hand on his shoulder, a hand so deathly cold it sent a shiver down his spine. It was then that Shinji realised he had never touched Henry's bare skin; he'd always worn long-sleeved shirts and jackets.

_I mustn't run away … I mustn't run away …_

The threat of an Angel loose in NERV headquarters overruled Shinji's embarrassment at being mere feet away from the naked, terrifying, _beautiful_ hermaphrodite, and he turned to confront the person who had once been Henry. Shinji gulped, trying not to think the strange and disturbing thoughts that entered his mind as he saw the Nth pilot … his friend. Henry looked so exposed and vulnerable, his flesh so smooth, and that cool skin may prove refreshing instead of pure creepy …

"Dirty boy, Shinji!" chided Henry, sound almost like Asuka, and 'covering' himself in a way that seem purely designed to draw attention to his body. "Don't look at me like that!" His indignant taunt carried a disturbing tone to it. Henry leaned closer, his lips pouted in a very feminine way. Shinji felt as though he was being pinned to the wall by a sculpture of ice, and there was something like Misato in the way the Angel moved. "You can use me, if you like," Henry whispered in Shinji's ear in a honey-soaked tone of seduction. "I can teach you what Heaven feels like."

Shinji then realised there was something cold against his leg, and it wasn't Henry; it was a small pistol he stole from Misato's apartment before he ran away. He pushed Henry away and whipped out the gun with trembling hands. Surely he didn't have an AT field?

"Oh, so you like it rough? I can live with that," said Angel-Henry with a smirk.

"S-shut up! I'll shoot!"

"You may be able to shoot _me_, Lilim …" Henry said, his features restructuring and flowing like molten glass, forming a black golem-like creature with bone armour, then a red cobra with clicking, undulating claws and two prehensile tentacles, then a blue octahedral monster seemingly made entirely of geometry. "… but what of my brothers and sisters? Could you kill them again?"

Shinji looked ready to fire. He gulped and closed his eyes to steel himself, but when they were open again, the Angel Ramiel was gone, replaced by a very naked and disbelieving Misato.

"Shinji? I gave you a home, something to fight for, confidence; is this how you repay me? You're going to kill me?" She sounded ready to cry; so convincingly, in fact, that Shinji began to falter. "I loved you, Shinji! Did you never see that? Or were you just toying with my heart all along?"

"Stop it!" yelled Shinji. He didn't want to admit it, but he had always felt something more than friendship for Misato, and suspected the same from her. But this was _not_ Misato.

The Angel changed tack; Misato was replaced with Asuka, sulky and arrogant as ever, but now apologetic. "I'm sorry, Shinji! I never thought you'd go this far! It was all a joke!"

Asuka was then followed by Gendo, then Ritsuko, Toji Kensuke another round as Misato, a quick spin as his mother, then the one person Shinji hoped not to see; Rei, bare as the day they met, when he had had to deliver her new pass. "You can't kill me, can you?" he asked in a perfect replica of Rei's emotionless monotone. Shinji couldn't take this kind of mental torture any longer; screaming primally, he squeezed the trigger.

The Angel's eyes widened in shock, but a psychedelic veil folded around him as the Rei disguise melted away, catching the bullet in the air and vaporising it before it could cause any harm. A psychotic leer formed on his face as a pair of feathered wings unfolded from his shoulder blades. The hook-shaped wings folded over his collarbone, impaling Shinji in the shoulders. The feathers, it seemed, were really thin, metallic knives. The Angel dug in deeper, seeming to relish Shinji's screams of pain and hacking off the boy's right arm before he could shoot again.

Shinji howled in agony; the pain was unlike anything Shinji had ever felt before, even greater than the sympathetic pain of the Evangelion. The Angel clamped its icy hand over his mouth and shushed him in a tender, motherly way.

"Hush now, Shinji. In fact, don't speak at all."

Shinji felt a burning on his lips under the hand. As the Angel pulled away, Shinji tried to scream and shout out, but he couldn't. He scrabbled at his mouth with his remaining hand, terrified. Henry just laughed and laughed.

Henry had replaced Shinji's lips with a blank expanse of flesh, as though there was never a mouth there.

"Remember, Henry was a lie. A trap, and you fell for it." And with that, the Angel pushed Shinji over, heading off for Terminal Dogma. He still had unfinished business to deal with.


	17. Letting Go

"What now?!" screamed Misato over the thick crumping sounds of explosions. The pilot of Unit-02, whoever it was, was trying ineffectually to shoot the inexorable black mass of tentacles through its AT field.

She was stretched to breaking point. All communication to Unit-02 seemed to have been severed, a kid with no training was trying desperately to line up the railgun on Unit-N, Henry and Shinji were nowhere to be found, and they were still getting Unit-00 ready for combat. The inhabitants that had successfully evacuated were now huddled in the storage pens, the others had become molten slag under the Angel's deadly gaze.

Too many people had died to get this far, and it was only going to get worse.

She really wished Shinji was here. He would beat the Angel somehow. Misato was worried about his welfare, though. Her military-issue pistol was missing, and she had a horrible feeling he not only stole it, but was going to do something very rash. She'd sent Ritsuko to try and find him; if he had managed to evac, that is.

"Ma'am, we have an unauthorised elevator heading for Terminal Dogma. The ID scan claims its Dr Akagi Ritsuko," yelled Aoba, for the Angel had decided to used its AT field as a giant sledgehammer, levelling a large section of the landscape and almost turning Unit-02 into a big red pancake.

Ibuki Maya's ears pricked at the mention of Ritsuko's name.

_"Ritsuko-sempai?" asked Maya, approaching Ritsuko. It was the day after Henry had stayed over. Ritsuko looked around at her._

_ "Oh, it's you. Ibuki, isn't it?"_

_ "Please, just call me Maya," she said, voice slightly fluttery._

_ "Very well, Maya. What was it you wanted me for?"_

_ "I … I wanted to ask you something."_

_ "Yes?"_

_ "What do you think of me?"_

_ Ritsuko looked her up and down. "As in? I do not understand what you want."_

_ "Do you … like me?"_

_ "I couldn't agree or disagree. You aren't in my department. I do not see you regularly enough to formulate an opinion."_

_ "Oh …"_

_ "Why did you want to know?"_

_ "Well … I … I think I love you, Ritsuko-sempai."_

_ Ritsuko took a step back, fixing Maya with a stern expression. "That was rather … sudden, Ibuki."_

_ "Don't you feel … _anything_ for me?"_

_ "I'm sorry, Ibuki, but I don't. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to run some tests on Unit-00. Have a nice day," she said, turning on her heel._

_ Ibuki bowed and smiled, but under her calm mask her heart burn with a mixture of hatred and realisation. _She never cared for me_, she thought, _she cares more for her _precious_ Evas than for me_._

Fuck you, Ritsuko.

Maya shook her head. How did she not see that side of Akagi before? Akagi never showed any affection for anyone; testing was all she cared about. Testing and machines.

Misato, however, frowned._ What the fuck was she doing heading down there?_ thought Misato. _She's supposed to be trying to find Henry!_ "What's unauthorised about that?"

"Kaji found her head on a MAGI server stack about a minute ago. No idea where the body is, but it was a clean cut, like by a sword or axe."

"And if Ritsuko's dead …"

"… her killer stole her card and used it to get down there," Aoba finished.

"Fuck," growled Misato, before being met with a horrible realisation.

Terminal Dogma housed a dormant Angel. Ritsuko was dead. She was looking for Henry. Her killer was breaking into Terminal Dogma. Henry was dangerously interested in the Angels.

"It couldn't have been Henry, ma'am," remarked Makoto. "Unit-N is rigged to blow if he betrays us."

"Yeah, and that's going to do a load of fucking good if he's not in it!" she spat. She couldn't believe how things were looking. Just when they most needed good pilots, one is on the run and the other appeared to have betrayed them.

/

Kensuke was just about to shoot the Angel when it happened. He was trying to take advantage of the distraction of the faster, more aggressive Unit-02 to shoot the Angel in what could charitably be called its back without it raising its AT field on him. He just had to line up the reticule …

Error messages flashed up all over the edges of the display, angry red splashing over his peripherals.

MANUAL SYSTEMS: DISENGAGED

ANAESTHETIC STIMULANTS: ENGAGED

PILOT SYNCHRONISATION: DISENGAGED

RE-ROUTING CONTROL MAINFRAME …

PRIMARY CONTROL USER: UNIDENTIFIED

SECONDARY CONTROL USER: INDENTIFIED – TUNNIEL

The Eva stopped responding to his controls. It stomped around, realigning its titanic gun to the metallic pyramid of the Geofront.

Capacitors whined as they discharged themselves into the railgun's huge electromagnets. Loading mechanisms forced a five-ton metal slug the size of a small lorry into the base of the barrel. The magnetic attraction built up, accelerating the slug rapidly to several hundred metres per seconds and out of the skyscraper-long barrel. The shell whirred out, its immense induced charge sending a plume of glowing plasma in its wake, impacting heavily with the Geofront's outer wall.

The shot ripped straight through the end of the bridge, thankfully too spent to go any further.

The sight of it, however, did not impress Misato.

"What's going on out there?" Misato barked. "Status on Unit-N, NOW!"

"Ma'am, it appears to have gone rogue! It just intentionally fired on us!"

There was another tearing crash. Unit-N had scored another hit.

"What the fuck does that kid think he's playing at?"


	18. Berserker

There was a hissing sound as Evangelion-N released the support frames holding the railgun in place, shaking the giant gun from its back like an angry bull. Safety restraints, bracers and locking mechanisms disengaged in its arms and legs, and it sprinted straight for the Geofront. It pounced, tearing at the building's armour viciously. It claws and teeth were clearly not just for show; it was rapidly carving into the Geofront like it was the flank of some great fallen beast.

Ikari Gendo had finally had enough of this insubordination. "Katsuragi, initiate the self-destruct sequence of Unit-N."

Misato was horrified by the request. Sure, Unit-N was tearing up the Geofront … but there was a civilian in there. "Are you sure, Commander?"

"That was an order, Colonel. Unit-N should never have come here. It is a threat to our very operation. It must be eliminated!"

Maya stole herself a weak smile. Ikari could delude himself all he liked; destroying Unit-N would do no more than buy a little more time. With Dr Akagi dead, there was no chance of getting Unit-00 operational, and Rei was not around to pilot it. Shinji was missing, too, so there was no chance of Unit-01 being deployed. And Unit-02 could only distract the Angel so long.

It was the end of the world. They just didn't realise it yet.

Misato gulped, slamming the detonator button into the console. An oddly-muffled sound of an explosion echoed around the Geofront, and pieces of Unit-N's armour flew every which way along with burning jets of LCL and roasted organs. The Evangelion let out a piteous whimper as it descended into the darkness of Death's shroud.

A window opened up on the main bridge display; a video of the inside of Unit-N's plug system. Henry grinned wickedly down at them, looking more like the sphinx-like Evangelion by the second.

"Hey guys. If you're watching this pre-recorded video, then I hope you know that I wasn't even in Evangelion-N when it went up."

"The bastard!" yelled Hyuga Makoto in rage. "He planned this!"

"The Evangelion had gone into a state of auto-pilot. I guess you could say it went Berserk. Basically, the poor sap I trapped in the plug system was innocent. Did he die instantly? Or did he feel his body disintegrating around him? Hmm … I wonder. I guess you'll be bothered by that for the rest of your lives, short as that will be. Henry Parkinson, signing out. Oh, and also? Screw you, Commander Ikari."

The message winked out. Aoba let out a hollow chuckle. Misato finally lost her patience. "Commander Ikari, let me go to Terminal Dogma. Someone needs to stop this madness."

Gendo nodded, unseen by any but Fuyutsuki in his office. "Normally, I would tell you to stay at your post, but I think that things have got too out of hand. Go."

Misato thanked him, setting off as fast as she could. Ikari sighed. This Henry had been a thorn in his side for too long. By all accounts, he shouldn't even _be_ in Japan.

/

Mari dived quickly to the side, as Zeruel levelled a vast expanse of the rubble of what had until recently been downtown Tokyo-3. She just couldn't get close to the Angel. It floated ponderously towards her, as though assessing how much of a threat the Evangelion was.

"Guess it's gonna take more than a human to kill that son of a bitch, huh?" she muttered, standing up to get a better look and flicked off the internal comms. She didn't want to have to wade through any of HQ's red tape. "Invert control," she commanded. "Backdoor Code: THE BEAST."


	19. Butchery

She skidded round the corner; there was blood spilled all over the floor, sometimes smeared as though by dragging footsteps. she scanned the corridor ahead. She was nearing Terminal Dogma's main access elevator; she could almost smell the pungent aroma like a heady perfume. That was when she noticed a bloodstained figure on the floor, breathing ragged and shallow. It was wearing a short-sleeved school shirt that was once white, and had short brown hair. Misato could only think of one person who could get into NERV headquarters and dressed like that …

"Shinji!" Misato screamed, rushing over and scooping him up in her arms. He looked awful; he was pale and sweaty, and his right arm was hacked clean off, the other shoulder looked as though it had been stabbed. Both wounds had long since closed up, but he had nonetheless lost a lot of blood. "Shinji?"

Shinji looked at her dizzily, and Misato gasped in horror at his utter absence of a mouth. She could see the mechanism of his jaws and hear the mumbles of his attempts to speak, but with no lips he was as good as mute.

"Who did this to you?" Misato asked tenderly, fighting her rising panic. What on Earth could do that to someone? Shinji gesticulated with his one arm left and mumbled, but could not convey a legible word.

Misato was stuck in dilemma. She had a penknife in her hidden pocket; she could easily cut open Shinji's mouth again, and he may be able to tell her what had been going on. On the other hand, she could get him to the medical wing and let them do it properly, but risk losing what little time she had.

She realised that the latter was no option at all; with whatever the hell it was rapidly approaching Terminal Dogma and Lilith, she couldn't afford to faff around any longer.

"Shinji, listen carefully," she whispered in his ear. "I can get you to talk again, but it'll hurt. A lot. Are you okay with that?"

Shinji nodded, closing his eyes and pulling something like a grimace, as though he knew what was coming and didn't like it one bit.

Misato pulled out the little sharp knife, feeling sick with herself. This was mutilation; abuse, even … but it was the only way she could fix the broken child in her arms. Her hand was clammy and started to shake.

_ Come on, Misato_, she thought. _Imagine it's an Angel Core. These kids can do it. Why can't you?_

Misato gritted her teeth, ignored the bitter bile in her throat, and forced the slightly-too-blunt-for-her-liking blade through where the corner of his mouth should be.

Immediately he began to scream. Misato slit open a new mouth for Shinji, her skin crawling and his screams of agony ringing in her ears. She was soon done, and tossed the knife away in horror. She cradled Shinji to her chest like a mother to a child, just holding him and shushing him soothingly until the pain died away.

"M-Misato?" asked Shinji blearily. Everything seemed fuzzier and softer through the haze of pain and blood loss. His voice was slightly slurred, but that was a given considering he had no real muscle in his makeshift lips.

"Shinji, what happened to you?"

""H … Henry. He's not … not human."

Misato's heart burned with fury. "It's okay, Shinji, just calm down. Okay? We're going to get you to the medical wing."

"No … Terminal Dogma … he's heading for Terminal Dogma. I think … he's trying … to reach the Angel. Oh, yeah; Misato?"

"What?"

Shinji pulled the bloodied pistol from his pocket; he'd prised it from his own fingers. "I … you should have this back. Put a bullet in his head."


	20. Enough Dead Heroes

Maya had finally made her decision. It was so _obvious_ to her now, she couldn't understand why she hadn't thought of it before.

"Makoto, Shigeru; give me your pistols."

The two men looked at her in confusion. Maya, due to her pacifism, had refused her standard-issue NERV pistol. So why did she suddenly want not only one, but _two_?

"Ibuki …"

"GIVE ME YOUR FUCKING GUNS NOW!"

The pair were so shocked that they handed over the firearms without argument. Ibuki _never_ used strong language. _Ever_.

She took the guns and bolted.

"Isn't she supposed to be keeping an eye on Unit-02?" asked Hyuga Makoto.

Aoba Shigeru checked her console, reminding himself that he was not qualified to do this.

/

Evangelion Unit-02 doubled over, as though in pain. Visuals had long since died, replaced with bloody-red static as the plug system plunged deep into the heart of the Eva. Buckled groans like a metallic whalesong rang throughout the system.

Like a row of spines, control rods burst from under the Evangelion's thick armour, and the mecha crashed to all fours, unable to stand on its own.

Mari grunted and shrieked in pain; it was as though control rods had erupted from her own back, her skin beginning to perforate as she became more a part of the Evangelion.

"I know! It hurts me too!" she roared at the mecha, eyes glowing in the gloom like emerald marshlight behind her cracked glasses. "But it's so much _fun_!"

The underside of the Evangelion's faceplate tore open, revealing rows of needle-like teeth, and the creature bellowed with its pilot as it pounced like a coiled spring, crashing hard into the thick AT-field of Zeruel. The Angel had only had enough time to set up a single thick barrier, rather than any organised defence. Unit-02 tore into the fields, tearing them like paper, as though it had gone completely savage. _Inhuman_.

The Angel coiled up its tentacles into two solid masses where its shoulders would normally be. Mari gasped, as if she could see what was to come and didn't like the look of it at all.

The tentacles unfurled into a pair of long, blade-like ribbons, carving deep into Unit-02's stomach and shoulder and throwing it away from Zeruel like an irritating insect. Mari screamed as her plugsuit began to split along the Eva's wounds, and muscle fibres sheared.

Zeruel's arm swung down like an axe, hacking off the limb at the joint. Mari screamed; her plug was too deep, and her own slowly sheared off. She clutched the wound, rolling in pain. Mari was something of a masochist, but this was too much. Her battle high couldn't mask it.

She rolled away, struggling to her three feet. Zeruel attempted another attack, but she dodged, bounding at the cosmic monstrosity but slamming once more into its AT-field.

Zeruel's eyes twinkled; the flash of stars in a cold black void. Suddenly, Mari felt a wrenching pain in her thigh as both the Eva's and her leg were blasted clean off. Evangelion-02 crumpled, unable to stand. Mari was having real trouble reminding herself that the pain was the fun of the thing; she was rapidly running out of blood, and the LCL-filled plug meant the wounds weren't closing properly.

Zeruel stood over her, as though deciding whether she was worth killing or not. She reached up, trying to tear off that skull-mask. Zeruel lopped off her other limbs in response.

"Just kill me, you son of a bitch!" she screamed, blinded by the pain. "If you want me dead that much, then do it!"

Zeruel seemed to shrug, or what looked like a shrug, flat forcing a flat, razor-like ribbon through the Evangelion's neck.

/

"The whole thing's gone to shit, Makoto. The pilot's been decapitated in sympathy to the Unit."

Makoto grimaced, burying his face in his hands. There was no arguing with that. For some reason, since the Ninth Angel, everything had been going wrong.

And now the safest place on the planet was sitting bare and unprotected, at the mercy of the merciless Angel.

"Why didn't we get Unit-00 operational, Shigeru? Why didn't we?"

"Wasn't it 'cos Unit-N was running?"

Makoto laughed. An empty laugh of someone who doesn't know how things could get any worse. "I guess. Pity it went traitor. And Unit-01?"

"Still refusing the dummy system. I don't know why Commander Ikari insists on it; you saw what it did to Bardiel."

Makoto frowned. "Who?"

Shigeru shrugged. "What that Parkinson kid called it. I dunno …"

They sat in silence for a while.

"So …" said Shigeru. "What happens now?"


	21. Gabriel

The last security door ground open, agonisingly slowly as ever. The blonde woman stepped out, bare skin gleaming in the spotlights reflecting off the giant in the lake.

"Lilith …" it breathed, exhilarated. It had been a close call getting down here; it knew that Ritsuko's card wouldn't be enough; it had had to rewrite a good deal of its biology to become enough of Dr Akagi's clone to fool the MAGI. It had spent the whole trip down worrying whether the supercomputer network had detected the S2 engine in its chest. So far, thankfully, nothing.

"Hands up!" someone behind it barked. It cursed. Why hadn't it closed the security bulkheads behind it? In its eagerness to reach Lilith, it was getting sloppy. It smirked on borrowed lips, raised its hands obligingly, and turned.

Misato gasped, but kept the pistol steady. What was _she_ doing here? She was supposed to be dead!

"What is the meaning of this, Colonel Katsuragi? I am at perfect right to be here."

"Try saying that again with clothes on."

It looked down at itself. "Ah. You got me. But this is so much more comfortable; you should try it sometime."

"I'll pass, _thanks_," Misato growled through gritted teeth. "What did you do to Shinji?"

"Shinji? Why don't _you_ tell me what _you _did to him?"

Shinji stepped forward from the shadows, clutching his shoulder wretchedly. "It's him," he said, a wavering determination in his voice. It made him feel awkward to think that not too long ago the Angel had impersonated Misato. _And_ he had been turned on by it.

"You sure?"

"Henry's a shape-shifter."

"Hello to you too, Shinji. How are you?" the Angel asked, reverting to its supposedly default form.

"Shut up, Angel! You dare ask me that?"

"But am I so bad? I welded your mouth shut, Misato hacked it open. She's not so different from me."

"She didn't cut off my arm."

"But I haven't pointed a gun at you. This is the second time in half an hour I've stood at gunpoint." The Angel chuckled. "I realised we haven't been properly introduced. I am Gabriel." He offered a hand to shake, but Shinji looked at it warily.

"Don't touch him," he warned Misato. Gabriel wore an expression of hurt that would not have looked out of place on a kicked puppy.

"You assume that my every action is tailored to pain and death? That cuts deep, you know. I'm not a monster, Shinji. Well, _technically_, I am."

Misato had had enough. "You can keep playing these mind games if you want. I'm here to stop you."

Gabriel cocked his elegant, unearthly head. "Are you sure about that, Misato? I don't think you have the guts to pull that trigger."

"I'll do it!" she barked, finger tightening on the trigger.

Gabriel, in riposte, tutted condescendingly. "They always say that. _I'll do it!_ All it serves to do is delay the realisation that you really can't do it. I know you, Misato. I know of your little heartthrob for Shinji."

Gabriel seemed, once again, to re-cast his glassy flesh. A perfect replica of the beaten, bloodied Shinji replaced him. Misato faltered slightly, but that created the opening Gabriel needed. He crouched and pounced at Misato, grappling her and sending the pair crashing to the ground, transforming back to give himself another arm to fight with.

He pounded her hard in the face and chest, long sharp teeth bared and snapping, trying to reach her throat. Misato pushed him away, rolling to a crouch whilst aiming her pistol. Gabriel leapt out of the way, faster than she would have given him credit for, clinging to a lip of metal over the opening, hoisting himself up as a shot rang out of the muzzle of the pistol. The shot missed, but Gabriel clearly wasn't taking any chances. It bounded off of the tiny lip and onto one of the spotlight housings, narrowly avoiding another bullet.

Misato fired off another couple of rounds, cursing as the Angel avoided them. With an inhuman screech, Gabriel pounced back towards her. He jumped the perimeter of the chamber like a wraith, perching like a smoked-glass gargoyle before evading the bullets.

Misato lined up the gun, with the trigger made a dull click. Out of bullets. She tossed the useless firearm aside, bracing as the Angel seemed to fly straight at her. The pair collided, but Misato was on her guard this time, and remained on her feet. It dawned on her just how tall he was; certainly a good deal taller than she was, and he had longer reach with those now-ridiculous-looking arms. His whole essence reeked of Uncanny Valley.

With a vicious leer, Gabriel transformed one of its feet into a sharp spike, stamping down on Misato's foot. Misato pulled her foot away, and Gabriel spun around on the crude peg-leg, swinging her around and throwing her towards the lake of LCL.

Shinji shouted in rage as Misato vanished over the edge, charging at the Angel with reckless abandon. Gabriel wrenched its leg free from the deckplate, turning to face the drunkenly swaying boy. The Angel smirked maliciously, extending his long arm into a fist that buried itself in Shinji's gut.

Shinji coughed up a globule of blood that Gabriel soon caught with his tongue, his face a mere inch from Shinji's. Gabriel kissed Shinji quickly on the cheek, relishing the mixed revulsion and embarrassment the pilot's eyes as he grasped Shinji's throat and began to squeeze.

Contrary to either of their beliefs, Misato had not drowned in the LCL. In fact, she was hanging by her fingertips over the edge, shoulders screaming at her to _let go_. Misato grunting in pure pain, slowly began to haul herself up. She was damned if she was going to let this Angel beat her.

Gabriel had Shinji in choking grip, dangling a good couple of feet off the floor, he was offering merely token resistance as he gasped and writhed.

"I was waiting for this moment, Ikari Shinji. It is such a shame that you're not as good in a straight fight as your mother."

"You never ... met my mother!" choked Shinji.

"You never wondered why your mother never left a body to bury? Why the plug reminds you of the mother you barely remember? She is the Evangelion, Ikari. She is its soul."

"You're lying!"

"Am I? Well, no matter. I am going to use your last moments to prove to you who you are. You are not big. You are not clever. You are not strong. You are a weakling, a coward, a fool. You wear your heart on your sleeve and wallow in self-pity. You've only got this far because of all the people who've held you up. You are a leech, Ikari Shinji, and nothing more."

"Get your dirty Angel hands off him!" roared Misato.

Gabriel threw Shinji away, whirling to meet the older woman's enraged assault. She tried to punch him. He grabbed her fist. She tried with the other fist. He caught that, too, clenching his fists until the bones in hers began to pop and grind.

Misato, out of sheer defiance more than brute strength, grappled with the Angel, the pair tottering around like the last drunken dancers at the end of a party in an attempt to overpower the other. Gabriel had lost that serene, confident smirk, replacing it with an animalistic grin like an axe murderer, glaring at her with his increasingly inhuman eyes. Misato grimaced back, pushing back against the much stronger Angel. Adrenaline was clearly one hell of a steroid.

Misato and Gabriel snapped out of it when a single bullet whirred between their eyes, scarcely two inches apart. Both forgot about their struggle to look around for the source of the disturbance.

A short, slim figure strode forth from the corridor leading to the elevator shaft. A young woman with short, messy brown hair and a military-grade pistol in each fist. There was a dissonant serenity to the way they walked.

"That's it, Ibuki!" shouted Misato in encouragement, trying to manoeuvre the deadly dance to put the Angel between them. Gabriel couldn't concentrate on two enemies at once, could he?

Bang. Crack. Blood. Crumple.


	22. Ashes To Ashes

Misato gaped in horror from the Angel to the strangely calm Ibuki. Misato tried to evaluate the damage the shot had done. By the feel of it, the bullet had entered in the back of her knee, forcing the bones apart and shattering the kneecap like a china plate. The pain was unbelievable, even in the wake of everything else.

"Ibuki Maya, what the _fuck_ do you think you're playing at?"

What scared Misato most wasn't the Angel. It wasn't the half-conscious Shinji. It wasn't that one of her inferior officers had shot her in the knee. It was that Ibuki seemed … deadened. She wasn't shaking, her breathing was deep and calm, and her eyes lacked any real sign of compassion as they regarded the fallen Misato.

She had never even held a gun before. And now she was standing like a natural-born killing machine.

It was hard to tell who the biggest monster in the room was.

Maya raised one of the guns, shooting the fallen Misato in the foot. Misato screamed, tears streaming from her eye. It had been a long time since she had last cried in pain. This was not a comforting thought, as Maya proceeded to shoot her in the thigh. And the shoulder. And the arm. And the hip. Finally she aimed the smoking pistols at the space between Misato's eyes. Misato couldn't look away, staring up at the 'pacifist' in horror.

"Come now, Ibuki-san," said Gabriel in a voice like silk. "There is no need to finish her off."

Ibuki dropped the guns, which clattered in the sudden quiet. Then she strode over, walking around Misato, and pulled Gabriel into a lover's embrace.

Both Misato and Shinji were too stunned to do anything but gawp. Gabriel smiled, stroking Maya's cheek while he gave her a deep kiss, wrestling tongues with Ibuki. "So you chose me over Ritsuko, then?" he asked when she finally pulled out.

Maya nestled her head on his shoulder. "Her being dead kinda helped. I must say, I admire your handiwork."

Gabriel kissed her again, before noticing the stunned looks on Misato and Shinji's faces. "Oh, are you surprised? Can't an Angel love or something?"

"It's not that," said Shinji, in the tone that clearly said that it was. "When … how … she's in league with you?"

"You know when I went over her place?"

"Yeah," said Shinji. Gabriel had said that nothing had happened, and Shinji hadn't believed him then, either.

"It started about then."

"But why, Ibuki?" pleaded Misato, dropping the officious act.

Maya stared at the two, and cracked into a wide, crazed smile. "Don't you get it? We're done for. There's no way to win this fight. Not without joining our Angel brethren. Right, Henry?"

Gabriel grimaced awkwardly. "Technically, no. I can only save one. The last Lilim. If you like, Maya, you can stay with me forever, an Angel in our Kingdom of Heaven."

Maya took another look at the others. "There is nothing more for me on this Earth. Only you, my Angel."

"You are forsaking the rest of humanity … for me?"

"No!" cried Misato.

"Ibuki-san, please!" begged Shinji. "We've fought for so long to protect mankind! Why leave us now?"

Maya said "yes." There was no hesitation, no emotion. The voice of a person in the depths of despair. But it was clear that Maya wasn't in despair. She'd just re-evaluated what her mission priorities were.

"Then I shall honour your wish. When I fuse with Lilith, I will craft a new body from the ashes of this world for you; an immortal shell for your soul to live on in. Is that what you want?"

"Yes, it is."

Gabriel looked down from on high at the fallen Lilim. He leant down, scooped the squirming Misato into his arms like a reluctant child at bed-time, and picked her up.

"I thought you were going to kill me?" she spat, too shaken to be really angry or afraid anymore.

"I am the Angel of Mankind and Mercy. I will grant you the small mercy of being with your beloved when you do die. Like I said, I cannot allow you two to survive; think of this as my apology."

He carried her over to where Shinji lay, close to passing out from blood loss and the LCL in the air. Gabriel laid Misato down, whereupon she scrambled over to comfort Shinji.

"Hey, Misato," he said tiredly, barely processing her presence. He turned his head towards her, gazing at her with eyes fighting sleep. "Guess we're both screwed now."

"Yes," she whispered. "It looks that way."

"I'm sorry, Misato. I shouldn't have tried to take him out on my own."

Misato shushed him, pulling him into a tender hug. "It's not your fault. And it's too late to be worrying about that. I hate to admit it, but he's right on that."

"I should have tried to find you."

"Maybe it would have been better if you hadn't run away in the first place."

"That's a ... a good point ..."

Misato let out a small 'hmmm' of assent. Her own pain was starting to leave her as her own eyes grew heavy. Maybe dying wasn't such a bad thing, after all ...

"I … I think I love you, Misato."

"I know, Shinji." She kissed him softly on the forehead to avoid disturbing the botched lips she had created. She was so tired, suddenly … she didn't even realise as her and Shinji's bodies dissolved, losing all form and substance, into a puddle of LCL.

All over the world, man, woman and child began to dissolve into pools of sludge; a wave of liquefaction spreading from the epicentre in Tokyo-3. First Japan, then China, Asia, Europe, Africa and finally America fell quiet, streets awash with blood and cruciform fires marking three billion graves.

It is said that sudden silence is one of the most unsettling sounds in the world; a palpable stillness in the air that reminds you that everything that _should_ be making a noise ... _isn't_.

As a world died; there were no screams of terror, no riots in the streets or descent into anarchy. There was just the sudden, infinite silence.


	23. Dust To Dust

"What was that?" asked Maya, for the first time feeling slightly afraid.

Henry was already inside Lilith's Core by this point, speaking through her mouth in a great, booming monotone. "An anti-AT field. It destabilises Lilim, returning them to their natural state, separating the soul from the flesh."

"How come it isn't affecting me?" She asked. It concerned her that she was not suddenly a puddle of goo like Shinji and Misato. She felt the slightest twinge of regret. If she had shot them, it would have been almost instantaneous. But this ... did they notice themselves dissolve? Did they die damning her name?

Maya mentally slapped herself. It didn't matter. Not really. She'd already given up on humanity. She just happened to have a way out.

"By an incredible amount of control from me." Maya could sense an amused smile behind the pitted mask. "I am spreading it over the whole world here, Maya. Consider yourself lucky I'm protecting you."

"Well, thanks anyhow. Y'know; for not killing me." Maya giggled. "And so it begins. The Rapture. Though I don't think the Bible had LCL in mind when it was written."

"No. But when the Lilim are harvested, the vanguard of Angels will arrive. My brothers and sisters. This world will be a world of the Angels."

"I understand now. There is no Heaven. The blood of mankind is the soil of the realm of Angels. Why should they accept us?"

"Why indeed?" mused Gabriel. "It is the determination of the Angels alone that keeps us trying. Since we landed on this world, you Lilim have shown us nothing but hostility. You murdered them; no less than seven of my brethren. You never once wondered whether they had a right to this world."

"Yeah ... sorry about that."

"Don't be, Maya. You are not to blame for the arrogance of the Lilim as a whole."

Maya saw the faintest flicker of two shapes like disturbances of the air leave the pool, sucked into the heart of the Angel as it tore the Lance of Longinus from its breast. Lilith began to change; grew thinner and leaner, a pair of slim elfin legs forming as the tissue seemed to melt and reform, reshaping itself as a titanic version of Gabriel's erstwhile form, knife-wings unfurled and eyes black as void on ghostly white skin. Half a cracked, pitted purple mask obscured his left eye.

"What was that?"

"I guess you Lilim would call it the soul. A scrap of life force. A packet of energy. _Data_, if you felt particularly cold. I can create a new body for you _and_ fix the rest of the world up with these. Impressed?"

"Very," said Maya, the sanity sliding slightly in her voice. Gabriel couldn't blame her; all over the world, people had dissolved, melted into LCL. People she knew … people she loved … and people she had never heard of. Everyone … doomed. They wouldn't be aware of anything during Instrumentality; like falling into coma, or even dying. It was an unimaginable fate. And this ordinary Lilim had decided that was what she wanted.

She had committed genocide on a whim.

The great form of Lilith ... no, _Gabriel_ tore itself free from the crucifix, the nails no match for an active Angel. Gabriel turned his great face to Maya. "You will have to die, too. I am sorry."

The hurt of betrayal in her eyes was unmistakeable. "I'll … I'll have to die? But you said you would spare me!"

Gabriel smiled, an iridescent sphere the size of a small house forming above his still-crucifixion-wounded hand. "I am. But your new body awaits you. Your soul must enter this, or you will not survive in this world." Gabriel blinked, and a tear that would fill a lake fell into the lake at his feet. "Please, Maya. I don't want to lose you. This is the only way."

"But … I'll die," Maya protested.

"It will only be for a short while, I promise. You probably won't even feel it; with no nerves, how can you feel pain?"

She sat down groaning as she cupped her face in her hands. He was going to kill her all along!

Wait ... no, he wasn't. If he wanted her dead, he could have just let the anti-AT-field wash over her like the ocean surf. But this ... this _must_ be different.

Maya smiled weakly. "Okay, then. For you."

She closed her eyes; she could not bear to see herself melt like Misato and Shinji had. Gabriel, quick as a flash, pulled the soul from the puddle, scooping it up and pressing it gently, almost lovingly into the sphere of light, which suddenly turned a deep crimson hue. A burst of pure white light as the dominant soul of what was Ibuki Maya established control over the weaker, more dormant souls of Instrumentality. For Maya had something Most of the Lilim didn't; the desire to survive in this silent, empty world. Fibrous tissue grew like a flower unfolding in fast-forward, the energy of a billion souls creating a flesh body to house the S2 engine. Long, graceful legs with sturdy, wiry muscles. A slender torso. Long arms with fragile hands. A head with Ibuki Maya's face and chocolate-brown hair. Skin like smoked glass.

Maya, now Evangelion-sized, suddenly gasped into life, eyes like harvest moons shining in the gloom. Gabriel smiled again, his narrow teeth glinting in the spotlights. "Maya, how do you feel?"

Maya stared at him, a wide grin breaking over her own lips. "I am … I feel perfect, my Angel."

"You _are_ perfect, Maya. A perfect, self-sufficient being."

"I remember Commander Ikari saying something like that."

Gabriel laughed at that. His brother Tabris had been keeping tabs on the SEELE. It seemed that Instrumentality was Gendo's goal all along, too. _Beat you there_. "Then let us leave this dismal chamber. My … _our_ brethren await us."

Gabriel wrapped one arm around the last Lilim's waist, raising the other to the roof. A beam of searing energy blasted from his palm, burning, burning through the metal and stone like a mining drill. The pair flew up, higher and higher, into the open sky at the surface of what was once planet Earth.

The sky was the first difference; the once-purple twilight was now a bruised, bloody crimson, a psychedelic halo spreading across the world.. The landscape seemed to be shifting and warping beneath their feet, as though alive in its own way.

"There they are!" cried Gabriel, indicating skywards.

Strange forms began to descend from the cloud like a meteor shower, another like a tattered black wraith crawling from the Geofront chamber. One, a glowing body framed by six feathered wings with a single red horn, flew up to the pair.

"Brother," it sang, in voice felt rather than heard. "It is good to see you again."

"Arael, my sister, did I not tell you I would succeed in creating this world for us?"

Arael gave off the impression of a scowl. "It didn't save Bardiel and Sahaquiel, though."

Gabriel nodded solemnly. "I know. They were too hasty. It is a pity that they died. I liked Sahaquiel. I feel ashamed that I had a part in her death."

Arael seemed to relax a little, but then she turned to rest her gaze on Maya. "This one is not one of us. She is of our Mother Lilith. You assured us that none would remain, Brother."

"She is the last, I assure you. But it would have been genocide to kill them all; our Mother's line would have been destroyed, and that would make us no better than the Lilim. Maya is under my jurisdiction. Do you have a complaint with that?"

Arael shook an idea of a head in the absence of a real one. "I cannot pretend to like the idea, Brother, but I understand your logic. If she is no longer an obstruction to us, then I have no need to destroy her." Arael seemed to then address Maya, because she said "do not try us, Lilim, for I am not so merciful as Brother, and I will happily crush you if it comes to it."

Maya nodded. She didn't care for humanity … the Lilim … any longer. They were gone; their bodies lifeless sludge, their souls her flesh. To walk among the Angels, as an equal …

Was that what her life was always building towards?

It was always said that the Rapture was the end; all men would die, the worthy souls collected by God to live in his kingdom with the angels. In a way, it was true; the souls of man ... the Lilim were collected by the Angels to create their own Paradise. It was meremy the issue that the Lilim themselves would not enjoy it.

But this was not the end. It was the dawn of a new era. The era of the Angel.

There were, naturally, sacrifices. Sachiel, Shamshel, Ramiel, Clockiel and Tunniel, Sahaquiel, Bardiel. Evangelion Unit-N. Lilith herself. Not to mention three billion Lilim.

Sacrifices. Acceptable losses.

Collateral damage.


End file.
